Minidisc and ATRAC pre-date MP3 as a format (1992 v 1995), so of course they didn't use the MP3 standard. Sony released MP3 players in the 90s, and while the software did indeed suck, it wasn't because of DRM. It didn't allow you to copy from MP3 player to computer, but that's not really a thing people want to do.

Anyway, the idea that they could leverage their movie holdings counters the idea that using an established standard as a format would have helped them. If they have large holdings, the only way to leverage that would be to restrict these large holdings to a Sony-only format. Similarly, Sony owns the company that makes Uncharted, they makes games in a Sony-exclusive format. If they owned the company that made Uncharted, and then had them design games in some open gaming format that would work on any gaming system, that would not help Sony's hardware division.

It's de facto exactly the same. In the case of a war, any sort of informal treaty with Russia would have been forgotten and we would have taken out the other's space based assets. Of course. It's not like "they're raining death down on us from above...but we're powerless to stop them! We have an informal treaty!"

And certainly China doesn't believe it could "win" a conflict with the US. And the US military procedures and military systems are designed with the idea that GPS may become unavailable (anyway, GPS signal can simply be jammed).

Well of course people already don't take Windows Phone seriously.

Well if programming for OpenGL is more difficult and requires elite skills just to be passably decent, that's a huge knock against OpenGL.

You're approaching this like a college student rather than like an engineer.

Maybe you ran into a guy who did that, but TMobile promotes it pretty well on their stores and their web page, and before they had iphones they had radio ads encouraging people to just use an unlocked iphone.

I looked into prices for my wife and I, and even without the subsidized phone (and using expensive phones paid off per the month) TMobile was substantially cheaper than AT&T or Verizon. For a family of four, AT&T becomes cheapest, with its family plans.

You could say that all the different prices and contracts and deals makes comparison between companies more difficult than it should be, but that doesn't make TMobile more expensive.

It's de facto been the same in the US...you just ask your company for a code and they give it to you for free (even if the phone has previously been under contract). Additionally, you've always been able to buy unlocked phones.

Huh? Most of the people who bought Wiis put it in the back of their closet after a few months. It has to be the least-used console ever made.

He joined the Nazis when he didn't have to, and then later lied under oath about when he joined, saying he didn't join until years later when he did have to.

Right, the parliamentary system, where the far-right and far-left parties form a single government that really makes no logical sense except as a political counter to the centrist government that is the most popular and by most senses of logic should win. Or the recent spate of far-right xenophobic parties that still manage to get the #3 position and end up with governing responsibilities.

Europe (for instance) has both a long and modern history of committing genocide and falling into fascism after a marginal political party slowly comes into power. It should encourage a political system that brings politics towards a more centrist position, rather than a political system that rewards appealing to the extremes and driving people in the center to these extremes.

Read a book. Pick up a new hobby. Go to the beach. Learn a language!

The robot barely moves, you could pretty much just put a cell phone on a stand and run a Jibo app and it would be the same thing. Make a $100 stand that's capable of being articulated about by cell phone software, and you could do everything that's in this video.

So while the youtube video is fun, what the company is really promising is a version of Siri that's far & away better than what Apple is capable of, delivered in less than a year and a half, on a budget far smaller than Apple's. I wish them the best but I'm sorry, I have to be a knee-jerk cynic.

Not a troll. I actually do use Libreoffice, both on Mac and on a Linux. However even for my very simple jobs, I often find Libreoffice has some bug I can't work around and I have to load up my pirated copy of MS Office, which actually works.

I keep using the open sores software based on some weird principle. It's fine (but not quite as good) for editing basic text documents.

Great, they save $100/employee/year. If the employees spend an entire 2-3 hours of their time / year dealing with the piece of shit that is Libre Office, it's already a stupid business decision.

Unless they're writing very, very basic papers in the word processor, it's a stupid business decision.

But the very article you posted says that there's testing because they're hoping to get classified as a sport, which no international sports league currently does. Chess promoters want to get into a sports competition such as the Olympics or Pan-Am games, and figure drug testing is a great first step.

Chess is not a sport, the idea is ludicrous.

Playing these games with no mouse and a virtual keyboard half an inch tall doesn't sound like very much fun. Even if it's technically possible.