So movies and music are off the hook since RIAA and MPAA members don't know how to adapt?

You are mistaken thinking that you are a not-for-profit customer. They make money on the fees charged to the merchant for each transaction. They also make more off that rewards card because the merchant gets charged much higher fees. You also pay more for everything because merchants factor that cost of accepting credit into their prices.

They don't make as much as someone carrying a large balance with a high APR, but it can still add up if your card gets enough use.

This six month old story on Ars mentioned more details on the program and 2 of the other major concessions they had to make to get the merger approved. Hiring Meredith Attwell Baker away from the FCC was probably a big help also.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/low-cost-broadband-key-to-comcastnbcu-merger-deal.ars

It said right in the summary that this was mandated as a condition of the NBC Universal merger. I'm sure Comcast is more than happy to have people believe that this was their idea though.

If you bought it recently, you have one of the slim models. They went on sale starting in Sept. 2009.

The Being Human aired on SyFy is a US remake of the BBC's Being Human. The first season of the remake just finished airing here. I enjoyed what I saw of the original on BBC America, but I didn't really watch this new remake enough to see how it compares.

You can't log on because the PSN is still down and the blog uses a PSN account. Once the PSN login server is brought back online, you'll know if you really were disabled, but right now nobody can log on unless they still had a valid cookie.

I've used the browser and online Blu-ray features numerous times without ever being prompted to log in to PSN. I just tested the browser right now to see if anything has changed and it works fine. There is a news ticker at the bottom though that had a link to the circumvention statement as the first item displayed.

I've never used Netflix, so I can't comment on that. It appears that Vudu requires a PSN connection though as I just tried launching that.

As a Wisconsin resident, I can't agree with your first statement. Most of the breweries here were started by German immigrants, who brought their knowledge and experience to their new home. I don't think a lack of history has anything to do with the quality of American beer. I think cost has the most to do with it, but it is also very unfair to lump all beer made here as sucky American beer. While I personally think the quality of the beers coming from the major breweries is lacking, there are plenty of smaller breweries and home brewers around the nation that produce excellent beers. There are many beers made here that rival and surpass any of the beers I had during the couple weeks I spent in Germany a couple years ago.

Quality beers cost more, so they don't sell as much because too many people would rather pound back a bunch of cheap beers instead of enjoying a smaller number of higher quality beers. A friend turned me on to a beer he really likes called Pranqster from North Coast Brewing in California. The first time I found it in a store, it cost me almost $10 for a 4 pack. I could have gotten a case of some lower quality beer for that price if my goal was just to pound back a bunch of beer. The bottle of Theobroma mentioned in the article cost me as much as a case of cheaper beer also. Cost also directly ties in with your second statement, higher quality ingredients are cost prohibitive if your goal is producting a more affordable beer.

Cost also has a lot to do with 2 other food products you mentioned. My best friend looked at me like I was nuts for grabbing a loaf of bread that cost almost 5x the price of the loaf of Wonder bread that he picked up when we were at the store once. The price was worth it though for the quality difference over that spongy Wonder bread. The same can be said for cheese. Yes, Wisconsin does make a lot of cheese, including a lot of the cheese you are calling bland and uninteresting and cost is the reason since the cheaper cheeses sell much more. We also have plenty of award winning artisanal cheeses, but they cost a lot more because they use higher quality ingredients and aren't made using the same industrial methods that churn out the lower quality cheeses.

I'm checking titles right now, Flower doesn't work for me either. Bomberman Ultra reverted to the demo, but the copy of Flow I just got free just launched fine and that has trophies, so does Bomberman Ultra. Trophies wouldn't be the cause of Flower not working for you, because you can sync those manually or it can automatically sync when logged in. I recently got a platinum for Uncharted 2 and it doesn't show in my online profile because I haven't let it sync yet. The last few times I played I wasn't logged into PSN at all.

It looks like games I downloaded from PSN that have a demo mode will launch, but will revert to the demo. Games like Flower with no demo will give this error: "An error occured during the start operation. (8001050F)" I stopped automatically logging into my PSN account and I thought I had played some of these games offline, but it looks like I will have to test once they fix the current problem. Which better me fast, this is a huge black eye for them. I'm hating DRM even more than I did before, thanks for helping the anti-DRM crusade yet again Sony. They are going to love bringing this one up.