Oh I believe he cares about the freedom part a great deal. Freedom from the CIA's backdoors that is. If you remove that non-monetary cost, Windows essentially costs pennies for an entity such as the Russian Federation.

Actually, if you had bothered to properly migrate your data as you stepped away from media formats throughout the years, all of those would still be perfectly readable. In fact, keeping a closet with old media is a ridiculous waste of space considering all of the data inside would probably fit nicely on a small home NAS. Leaving media formats behind is like moving to a new home. If you don't take your stuff with you, don't expect it to magically show up when you want it. I've already archived all of the data I ever originally had on CDs. Have you?

Yeah, most don't. But if Uematsu wanted to, I bet he could make FF4 into a pretty nice one!

While that is true, the data transmitted over HDMI is indeed not compressed. You'd need a drive solution that could store data at almost 5 Gbit/s for 1080p, including sound.

Supposed to? Says who? Linguistics is not a prescriptive science. I've been using the term to describe all kinds of small, specialized utilities since something like 1993.

I used to regularly buy stuff from PSN. Then they removed linux. I thought I wouldn't miss it much, so I updated anyway. But I do. So now that there's a hack and a hope for getting linux back, I'm not updating. Sadly, that means I can no longer buy anything from PSN. Too bad. I was hoping to get the new Lara Croft and the guardian of light game and maybe the deathspank expansion. Hey Sony! I have money right here! You can have it if you let me back into your store and/or put linux back in!

I'd like to point out that box office returns are not a measure of how much the people liked the story after they have watched the film. In my part of the world, people generally pay before they get to watch the film. The decision to pay, and therefore increment the box office return value, hangs upon factors such as word of mouth, critic reviews, marketing, exposure, curiosity about new technology, graphics fidelity (as seen in marketing materials), admission price and affinity for popcorn. The story is just a sub-factor of word of mouth and critic reviews.

I believe being paid hundreds of million dollars for art is indeed insane. I don't think anybody really deserves to be paid that much, no matter what they do. Especially artists, since their work, unlike that of doctors, engineers, scientists or farmers, is of little benefit for humanity.

I'd say it's almost as polite as not selling hamburgers to fat people. If you were fat, would you really consider that polite? If you were a soldier, would you really consider it immensely polite on the part of GameStop if they made a product unavailable to you strictly based on your occupation? Would you consider that any better that racism?

Overkill? Are you kidding? It wouldn't work well at all. Firstly, most kitchens don't have a huge empty wall to project to. Secondly, they require darkness to work well. Thirdly, the person standing in front of the projection area would cast a shadow, ruining the illusion (you can usually only change the angle by about 15-25 degrees in either direction optically). Finally, there's no place to put the camera - it would have to be placed outside the projection area, which would mean the other side would see you at a sharp angle - which is not what you want. There's also the small matter of having an extremely bright light shining in your kids' eyes whenever they turn away from the picture. Projectors are nice, I use one instead of a TV, but in this case, they're the wrong tool for the job.

Security trumps a few CPU cycles. End of story.

I wouldn't worry. In modern society, every time you open your eyes, there's a very strong chance you'll see some text somewhere, be it an advertisement, a book cover, some text on a screen, your cell phone. There's so much text around that children haven't the slightest chance of not learning how to read unless they have some kind of rare medical condition that prevents them. Of course I'm not talking about poor children in Africa here - I'm sure the iPad version of Alice is not much of a problem for them. And as far as interactivity replacing text is concerned, I wouldn't worry about that either - it's just an evolution of the medium. If interactivity is readily available and easy to implement, there's no reason authors shouldn't embrace it to enhance their works. If they, or their publishers misuse it, I'm certain the readers will set them straight with their wallets.

When you wrote touchscreen, I thought you meant a capacitive touchscreen, like the iPad has. Those don't work with pens since they can't distinguish between the tip and your hand. If it's anything like Penabled screens, great. I'll look into the U820. Thanks for the tip.

Oh, I see you're one of those people who know exactly when you're leaving at least a day in advance and know exactly what media files you want to take with you. Or you simply never use your media outside your home network. Glad it works for you. That doesn't mean it works for everybody.

Problems with your pet toy:
- Screen resolution. Very many UIs just won't fit. They may be badly designed UIs, but I need them nonetheless.
- No pen. Seriously. I want to take notes and make drawings on the thing. A finger just doesn't cut it and has no pressure sensitivity.
- No 3G modem. Wifi is nice, when you're in range. Netbooks are mobile devices to be used where no WiFi has gone before.
- 1 USB port. That means I can have either my mouse or my pendrive. But not both. I often need both.

If some company solves these problems, I'll buy one.