I have an ancient samsung cdrw, it must be 15-16 years old now, that I just move around if the need to read cds the old skool way arises.
Never had any dvd reader of any kind.

Thanks for all the work, slashdot has always been a unique spot on the interwebs.
Steve Jobs gonna be pissed at you, taking the spotlight like that.

Theres excellent gear available from small vendors that specialize, in all price ranges.

A system with

2 small stand speakers
1 powered sub (must play bass, not 1 frequency)
DAC hooked to your pc running mpd or something (make sure it doesnt resample)
1 decent 100W-ish integrated amp

can sound fantastic and doesnt have to cost much.
You DO have to take the time to position the speakers, as it affects the sound enormously, but the sub makes it a lot easier.

Much of the west coast is luke-warm year round cause of the gulf stream, inland it gets pretty frosty tho.
The church burning thing was popular a while but is old hat now (also running low on suitable churches, new ones are pure asbestos).

focus on reducing the causes of crime and you kill a whole migration of birds with 1 stone.

T+A

lots of noise about "necessary secrecy" etc., the fact is US is a banana republic, albeit a fragmented one.
Greed is celebrated and cultivated from an early age, why is anyone surprised it leads to greedy people?

The choice for someone in whatever agency is to toil anonymously until death, with noone giving a flying fuck, or take the offer of directing funds to this or that company, in return for money and a life.

Ill second this, I respect Linus as an engineer first and foremost. This is ofcourse extended to all of the kernel hackers.
Technical advice from any of these carries weight.

RMS I respect as a visionary with quite extraordinary consistency and patience, again extended to all GNUs.
He gets a lot of flak from short-sighted people for an uncompromising stance, this is unfair.
Its his role to be clear and firm, so that stuff moves in the right direction instead of stagnating in details.

They have overlapping spheres of influence, I think a large part of free softwares success is due to them both working at the same time.

Big deal, Id do it in half the time.

I love Russia, and I think this gesture is more important than the language suggests.
Russia is the first country to give the finger to US acta shakedown, which makes it easier for others to follow.
Its not "most of the rest of the world" that wants harsher ip crap, its the US and some spineless countries that do as they're told.

Ill second this. NWN has to be the best value game ever made, with enough graphics for younger players and depth as they grow.
I would stay far away from anything blizzard, its extremely cynical stuff hidden below a thin layer of glitzy graphics, the gaming equivalent of sugar bomb cereal.

You are right ofcourse, I think calling the concept amoral is a little harsh tho. MMO running companies run the whole moral spectrum like everyone else.

Technically theres no such thing as a digital signal; look at it on an oscilloscope and its a far cry from the impossible squarewave used to represent them.
The receiver has to make a choice when to switch a 0 to a 1, with long slopes, noise and ringing this can cause problems even if its a "digital" signal.
Equipment today is good enough that its "never" a problem, signals get reclocked and cleaned up, crc etc.

So no, you shouldnt buy expensive hdmi cables, but you shouldnt mistake the abstract digital concept for its real, messy electrical representation either.

I find the whole celebrating the execution of an old man in front of his family thing pretty distasteful.
Maybe the execution was necessary, the gloating is just sad.

First round of colonies gave us resources and free labour to develop our societies and tech.
Second round, the colonies have moved to the IP world which is owned completely by the west due to the advantage from the first round.

While I dont think theres any point backdating morality, things were different during the first looting, theres no excuse for the 2. except might is right.