Yep, this is the so-called "analog hole".

Loopback male-male cable usually. Some soundcards such as creatives can do this without the cable.

It's pretty much 100% 1 and 2. Both the carrier and manufacturer get kickback for shipping the phones with certain apps preloaded, and since they are part of the system image, unremovable without some extra work (rooting). Every Verizon android phone, for instance, comes with Amazon Kindle/MP3, Verizon's Navigator software, CityID, and Blockbuster pre-installed, and there's nothing you can do about it. In addition, things like usb tethering (not wifi) is supposed to be a standard feature for android as of 2.2, but is disabled in most phones. As far as planned obsolescence, while you can't directly prove it, one nice example is Sony Ericsson, which promised for months and months that it would upgrade its X10 line to the latest android, then finally said it was impossible for "technical reasons", then announced its new line of phones, which would launch with the latest version of android.

My understanding is that this protection stops the "causal sharing" of PSN games, i.e. the Sony supplied ability to install your PSN games on five different PS3s. Currently I can create a user account for myself, log in to PSN and download any game from my PSN account, and so long as that user account is on the PS3, they have access to those games, without needing my PSN account details beyond that (i.e. I don't have to give them my password). This additional protection would prevent that.

Couldn't you have just used the Nook PC app under WINE? And on the subject, at least in comparison to Kindle, the DRM of B&N books is pretty easy to remove, leaving you with an unprotected ePub file. Though, I don't really recommend doing this for viewing on the Nook, just as a backup, as you lose all the social and sync features on side-loaded books.

I have one of these sticks, which I picked up on clearance, unfortunately it's an analog stick, which means it's not terribly useful for many classic games.

I always forget that Slashdot strips out extraneous spaces and newlines. Sorry for the lack of commas there. Myst, Riven, Myst III : Exile, and Myst IV: Revelations. Then the second story arc of Uru, then Myst V : End of Ages.

RealMyst was the prototype engine for Uru and later Myst: End of Ages. As far as Myst goes, there are two sets of games as far as the story goes: Myst: Riven: Myst III: Exile Myst IV: Revelations (My personal Favorite) Then Uru Myst: End of Ages

In a nutshell, the entire city of D'ni was the common area of the game, with all the other ages behaving like instances. All players belonged to a neighborhood which behaved a bit like a guild hall. In addition to the social aspects, you could bring other players with you into an age to cooperatively work together, and several of the new ages that were released after the retail release required multiple people to solve. However the core of the MMO experience was this: there were live actors playing characters in the game a certain times throughout the month. These staff members represented the fictional org (D'ni Restoration Council) that was attempting to exhume/restore the remains of this lost empire. How the players interacted with them (roleplay!) and the decisions that they made determined what new areas of the city were opened up and any plot developments that occur because of that.

Well, for DOS games, DOSbox can do a number of different scaling modes. From the Wiki: normal: nearest-neighbour scaling (big square pixels) scan: like normal, but with horizontal black lines tv: like scan, but with darker versions of data instead of black lines advmame: smooths corners and removes jaggies from diagonal lines advinterp: identical to advmame rgb: simulates the phosphors on a dot trio CRT As for old windows games, I hope to hear something else. One last note, Myst was re-released as a "Masterpiece Edition" with higher resolution re-rendered graphics.

Mod Parent Up. This is exactly correct, and exactly how service is set up for Blackberries on the Verizon network. The data plan is unlimited for data used from the phone, it's the tethering that has the 5gb limit on it. There are also ways around VZW's tethering fee, there are many programs available that can use the phone's own net connection as a proxy an allow tethering, rather than using the "official" tethering method. Such as PDANet for Windows phones (and Android, I believe) and TetherBerry for blackberry phones.

I hadn't noticed this when the original story broke. But this change also apparently disables Physx processing on Physx dedicated physics cards, i.e. the things Agiea was making before Nvidia bought them out. I know those weren't the most popular addon, but I happen to know of a school with a computer lab full of those Physx cards, and the majority of them have ATI/AMD cards for graphics. For them at least, this update renders all those standalone cards useless.

If I was concerned about people snooping around on my phone, I would set it to lock, so it requites a password if you want to fuss with it. Pretty much all phones can do that.

Even the smaller birds can do this, my cockatiel can perfectly imitate the whistle we use to call the dogs, as well as imitate the noise that the squeaker in a dog toy makes.

Design patterns, by the "Big Four" has pretty much been the bible of software design thus far for me. It pretty much covers the methodology of all the popular patterns with examples. It has been the book I reference most, after language and API specific books. http://www.amazon.com/Design-Patterns-Object-Oriented-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633612/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1230057965&sr=8-1