It's 12:21am, Jan 1, 2010 here and I got rickrolleded. I set my clock back a day, and got a white screen with a countdown.

I listen to classical symphonies, but I also find that listening to ballet (Swan Lake is a perfect, classic example) is even better than symphonies, because while there are technically more breaks in the music than a symphony, there tends to be a single narrative flow in a ballet.

What I mean is that in a symphony each movement has its own underlying theme, upon which variations are built. Ballet, on the other hand, tends to carry the same themes through the entire work (although often more than one - usually one for each major character).

I'm very easily distracted by sound and need to choose very carefully what I listen to when I need to concentrate. I always seem to come back to ballet.

I guess these older plants are still using Pentiums

There seems to be an overwhelming consensus here that Microsoft is trying to protect its interests by preventing piracy. This is, of course, true. However, someone above mentioned a mother buying a PS3 instead of an XBox 360 because she was concerned about the banning, etc. The argument then is that Microsoft loses revenue by scarying people away, while all the banned people continue to refuse to buy games. In other words, they see Microsoft taking a net loss on this.

However, aside from preventing piracy, Microsoft is trying to prevent cheating. People are throwing around a number like 99% of people are doing this to pirate games. However in my experience there are as many people who mod in order to cheat in multiplayer games as there are people who do it specifically to pirate. I'm sure that the cheaters ALSO pirate games, but for a large number of people it is not their primary goal.

Lots of gamers will be turned of XBox Live and buying 360 games in general if they encounter a large number of cheaters while playing online. I've encountered more than my fair share. Microsoft gains from protecting legitimate customers from cheaters, keeping those customers playing and buying new games (and XBL subscriptions).

What is involved in porting code to a new chip? I've done some programming in my life, but it has mostly been limited to personal interest and school projects. I imagine it can't be as simple as just recompiling. So what does it take to port code?What are the hurdles? Assume (accurately) that I'm a total noob.

Sony Online Entertainment

As a kid I remember the big catch phrases being acid rain, the ozone layer and, to a significantly lesser degree, global warming. I remember seeing pictures of perfect blue lakes where all the life had been killed off by acidification and being told that the hole in the ozone layer would mean that I'd need to wear SPF 8000 sunscreen when I grew up, unless we did something about it.

So far as I know we cleaned up emissions from cars and factories to combat acid rain, and it's been very effective. I'm not sure why anyone would've thought that scrubbing pollutants out of the air would affect global warming though. CO2 was never getting scrubbed out.

The air conditioner thing you're referring to had to do with CFCs, iirc. CFCs were the primary agent wrecking the ozone layer, punching holes in it over the Arctic and Australia, as well as other places (to lesser degrees).

Acid rain and ozone layer depletion were issues with proximate, easily identifiable and fixable causes. Rain pH, pollutant content and ozone layer thickness are all very easy to measure and demonstrate, compared to global warming. It's difficult to pretend that these are the result of natural oscillations in the climate.

Do you honestly believe the whole open source movement depends on people uniting around a hatred for Microsoft, as opposed to sharing a love for innovation and technology?

Sorry if that sounds kind if "hippy", but saying that the entire FOSS world is based around nothing but hatred for a particular corporation really cheapens the accomplishments of the people involved.

Unless I'm mistaken (and I very well may be) the code released is under the GPL, which seems to me to eliminate any worry about "licensing etc. issues", regardless of Microsoft's history.

Canadian Laws regarding "hate speech" have to do with inciting others to violence against any distinct group of people, whether they be gays, muslims or WASPs. Criticism in and of itself is not prohibited. For example:

"Go forth and kill all Pastafarians." This is iIllegal in both Canada and Ireland.

"All Pastafarians are idiots." This is legal in Canada, but illegal in Ireland.

IANAL and all that, but so far as I understand it, it is legal to criticize religious (or whatever) groups in Canada, but not legal to incite others to commit violence against them.

"in fact is MORE LIKELY to change if you start cooling water ahead of it"

Well, maybe we can't break up a storm, but diverting it away from a population center still sounds like a plus to me.

I do tend to agree that the number involved don't look particularly workable though.

Originally I was getting this message as well, which is why I called them in the first place. The techs told me that they were enabling the feature gradually (pushing some sort of update to the phone?) and that it would be available nationwide tomorrow (Friday).

I found this earlier today indicating that Rogers will allow anyone with a 1GB or greater data plan to tether. I called them to confirm and I am in fact allowed to consume bandwidth right up to my 6GB cap, same as if I was consuming the bandwidth on the phone itself.

The really surprising thing is that it's automatic. I didn't have to get them to turn anything on in my account. I simply turned it on in the Network Settings page and was able to tether my Windows 7 laptop and a friends Macbook Pro over both Bluetooth and USB without issues and, even more surprisingly, without iTunes installed (on the Win7 machine).

Bandwidth was around 3Mbps down and 0.3Mbps up, with a minimum ping of around 150ms, tested on multiple servers using Speedtest.net. This is in the middle of Halifax, NS.

"No, wait, Windows CE is 13 years old. It's had a little more time to design the window manager for different screen sizes."

While I agree with everything you've said here, and that the age of Windows CE makes the comparative shortcomings in Android somewhat excusable, it doesn't change the fact that Windows CE seems to do what NVidia wants and Android doesn't.

Android being new is a perfectly valid excuse, but in a here-and-now business sense Nvidia just has to go with what works... I guess.

Writing this is hurting me. I really, really hate Windows CE (or Windows Mobile or whatever they call it these days.)

I understand the point you're trying to make, but the question is a bit silly. While I acknowledge that this eliminates more physical disabilities from gameplay than traditional console designs, I don't think that a one-armed person could play, say, Halo on a normal XBox 360 controller either. Further, the much-loved Nintendo Wii has plenty of games that also require the Wii-mote attachment and therefore two hands, including Boxing which ships with the console (part of Wii Sports).

It is unfortunate that people with certain physical disabilities are being excluded from gaming by these new controller designs, but to suggest that game companies shouldn't innovate in this way lest some people be excluded by unfortunate circumstances sounds a lot like a Vonnegut short story to me.