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An exercise for the reader: find the original 8-bit sprite of Princess Zelda from the first game. Not Link to the Past, Minish Cap or Phantom Hourglass, not Ocarina of Time, Wind Waker or Twilight Princess. Not SSBB. Not manual artwork. And not cosplayers. Definitely not the cosplayers.

(or "The Googles! They Do Nothing!")

I've got a Samsung Slimfit HDTV, because I'm a cheap bastard. It works for what I want it to do, namely play console games. But I've got a PC I'd like to hook up to it for use with Windows Media Center. And while my PS3 and my Xbox 360 display just fine, connecting my PC through either a DVI-to-HDMI cable or through the component outputs on the nVidia dongle produce centering and overscan issues. I've tweaked the settings through the nForce software to do what I can, but the best I can do is a desktop where the bottom half of the taskbar is missing, and of course all bets are off if I try to do anything in full screen mode (i. e. play games).

End result: watching recorded television looks better going through my Xbox 360's Media Center Extender than it does directly from Media Center. Brilliant!

"Hark! This is the Twenty-First Century! I shall ask the internet!" I feed "slimfit overscan" into the Googles.

First few pages are posts on the ever-increasing scourge of the internets: web forums. Most (if not all) of the hits I get while searching for solutions to this problem land me in some php monstrosity that (attempts to) display an entire thread on single page. There are two types of threads:

1.) Threads with two posts in the past year: the first being a question and the second a "Hello? Anyone?" Example

2.) Threads with 2673 posts spanning 4 years, with no attempt at threading or any obvious connections between one post and a potential response to it. Example

The first one doesn't help because, obviously, there are no answers. The second one, though, ends up being even less useful than the first! Yes, there is a single HTML document with the words "slimfit" and "overscan" appearing somewhere within, but these words need not appear anywhere near each other, separated by the complete unabridged works of Tolstoy. I'd have been better off if I landed on a website that offered "What you need, when you need it."

One thing that seems to be missing from Google is the option to exclude hits from specified domains; -"avsforum.com" doesn't accomplish anything. So I try to exclude the forum names proper, but even then it takes over half a dozen excluded terms to even begin to narrow my search to something vaguely resembling useful information. And then I need to exclude pages with phrases like "customer reviews," which prove similarly useless.

All of this leaves me with hours wasted and no closer to a solution than when I started, if not having moved even further away; I learned about an application called "PowerStrip," but if I could actually figure out how to use it, I could probably build my own television from bailing wire and duck tape.

So I'm left pissed off about not only my inability to get my PC to do what my consoles do out of the box, but also at all the completely useless drivel on the internet that makes any attempt at finding meaningful information about the problem (let alone information that may lead to a possible solution) all but impossible.

Ain't technology grand?

All numbers are from the "sweeping change" of the 2006 election, which had a 37% voter turnout and gave us the 110th Congress, whose approval rating is now 11%.

For the House of Representatives:

• Number of incumbents who lost their race: 23
• Number of incumbents who retired, leaving their seat vacant (run for different office, "spend time with family," etc.): 32

For the Senate:

• Number of incumbents who lost their race: 6
• Number of incumbents who retired, leaving their seat vacant (run for different office, "spend time with family," etc.): 3

Focusing on House races where the incumbent faced at least one challenger whose name appeared on the ballot (i. e. not a write-in), discounting blank, scattered and overvotes:

• Total number of such races: 367
• Number of such races where the incumbent won: 344 (94%)
• Percentage of voters in these races who voted for the incumbent: 64%

Focusing on those House incumbents up for re-election who had already served three full, consecutive terms (i. e. one full Senate term):

• Total number of all such races: 273
• Number of such races where the incumbent won: 255 (93%)
• Percentage of voters in these races who voted for the incumbent: 64%

Same as above, but only in those states with a Senate race as well:

• Total number of all such races: 199
• Number of such races where the incumbent won: 187 (94%)
• Percentage of voters in these races who voted for the incumbent: 64%

Same as above, but only those states where the Senate incumbent lost:

• Total number of all such races: 41
• Number of such races where the incumbent won: 38 (93%)
• Percentage of voters in these races who voted for the incumbent: 63%

For comparison, Senate races where the incumbent faced at least one challenger whose name appeared on the ballot (i. e. not a write-in), discounting blank, scattered and overvotes:

• Total number of all such races: 29
• Number of such races where the incumbent won: 23 (79%)
• Percentage of voters in these races who voted for the incumbent: 58%

This would seem to dispel any doubts concerning the power of gerrymandering in House elections. Even after taking into account the shorter terms of Representatives compared to Senators, the collection of incumbents will win 93% of the time, even when the voters in question are simultaneously choosing a new Senator. And with the approval rating sinking so low, we are close to the point where it is a mathematical impossibility to say that voters dislike Congress as a whole but still like their particular Representative.

I will soon look into those 32 retirees from the House to see how much truth there is to the adage that a Representative is more likely to be indicted than lose an election.

Ah, Square-Enix, the Disney of the video game world.

We feel that the Japanese game market still requires [physical] media. Also, FF and Dragon Quest are played by a wide range of users, from children to adults, so there are limitations when you consider the problems that we would have with billing systems.

Maybe the statement about the Japanese market and the need for physical media is true, but we'd need to compare sales of VC games in Japan versus the rest of the world to find out. However, there is a whole world outside of Japan, one that has shown itself more than satisfied with the download model, and one that has yet to see two Dragon Quest games in any form.

As for the "billing issues," I'm assuming he's suggesting that most children don't have credit cards with which to buy these games. Well, how are these kids buying Square-Enix downloads for their mobile phones, then? And why can't they buy their games the same way I do: using cash to buy points cards?

It's safe to say that this statement is little more than a hand-wave to distract people from the real reason Square-Enix doesn't want to sell its bread and butter on the virtual Console: they're still charging a premium for remakes for other systems. After all, Final Fantasy for the PSP comes out next month.

And, ultimately, I foresee Square-Enix's greed here to be their downfall.

Let's consider Final Fantasy for a moment. The original game was released for the Famicom, and Nintendo did the grunt work of translating and publishing the game for the NES in other markets. As far as the Virtual Console is concerned, little else needs to be done with it other than upload it to the servers.

However, in recent years, Square-Enix has been publishing a number of remakes of the original game, where they updated the graphics and sound, tweaked the combat system to make it easier, and added some pre-rendered cutscenes in some versions. The first remake was for the WonderSwan Color, which included the game as a pack-in. The first taste of the remake that non-Japanese gamers had came with the PlayStation release of Final Fantasy Origins, in which the game was bundled with Final Fantasy II on the same disk. A similar scheme of combining the two games was used when they were released for the Game Boy Advance.

For gamers outside of Japan, Final Fantasy Origins for the PlayStation was worth the purchase as it came with a game that had never been released outside of Japan, Final Fantasy II. For me, at least, the Final Fantasy I remake was pretty and worth a quick playthrough, but I more enjoyed playing the first Final Fantasy game that involved character development.

And while I'd already played both games on the PlayStation, Final Fantasy I & II: Dawn of Souls for the Game Boy Advance promised me additional story arcs in Final Fantasy II. New dungeons in Final Fantasy I were, again, something worth playing through just to look at, but (at least in my opinion) certainly not enough to justify purchasing the game alone.

Now we have Square-Enix on the verge of releasing Final Fantasy I for the PSP. For those of us outside of Japan, this will be the first Final Fantasy remake in which I wasn't bundled with II. What will we be getting if we put down some money on yet another Final Fantasy remake?

• Some cutscenes, most (if not all) of which we've already seen on the PlayStation.
• Some extra art sketches, which probably wouldn't be enough to justify publishing a $10-$15 book of artwork for.
• A new dungeon, something that romhackers have been adding to Final Fantasy since before the WonderSwan Color.

All this on a UMD that will at least cost as much (probably more) as the Game Boy Advance cartridge that included a whole second game.

Sure, the game will likely sell reasonably well in Japan, but I for one won't be buying it, not for $30, and not for $15 after it inevitably hits the bargain bin, and I have a hard time seeing anybody outside Japan but the most rabid fanboy shelling out money for this particular remake.

The game will sit on the store shelf for a few months, but shelf space dedicated to the PSP is limited and it's surprising how quickly games disappear from those shelves (already it can be difficult to find Valkyrie Profile). As a guess, I'd say Square-Enix has about six months to actually make money off this game, before it starts to cost stores to stock this game rather than pay, and there are too many used copies in stores and on eBay for new copies to compete against.

A Virtual Console release of the original game, in its original form, certainly wouldn't look as lucrative, with its $5 price tag instead of $30+ for a PSP game. But unlike a PSP game, a VC game doesn't have to compete for shelf space: once it's for sale, it will always be available for purchase, allowing impulse buyers to buy on their own schedules rather than hoping that a customer's impulse will happen while the game is still on shelves (remember Valkyrie Profile).

On top of that, for $5, Square-Enix wouldn't have to try so hard to add content in the hopes of justifying the purchase price to buyers. Sure, often the additional content is enough to justify buying the game again in the mind of enthusiasts, but this isn't always the case, and this PSP remake itself seems to be destined to be one of the failures. And when you add up the costs of stamping the UMDs, printing the inserts, buying the advertising and actually shipping the game (on top of paying the programmers and artists), such remakes certainly have the potential to lose the company money as well as earn it. Not only are these costs all but non-existant for Virtual Console games, but Final Fantasy (at least) doesn't need any additional input from programmers, artists or translators. The only cost is bandwidth.

It's doubtful that anybody will be able to talk sense into Square-Enix at the moment, they likely don't yet see these remakes as a gamble compared to the sure thing of VC downloads. About the only way this is going to happen is if Square-Enix starts to lose money on these remakes while some competitor makes money on downloadable games. The ignonimity of watching downloads of Ys for the MSX (a system already on the VC in Japan) or Phantasy Star for the Sega Master System (if you can emulate a Genesis, you're more than half-way there) continue to give Falcom or Sega a steady revenue stream long after Square-Enix has ceased to make a dime off of new UMD sales of Final Fantasy should be shocking enough to get their attention.

Until then, why would I buy the PSP version of Final Fantasy when I could buy two Wii points cards instead?

Because everybody else has already put in their two cents, I suppose I must as well.

This rite of custom brings us together

Considering nobody from Jefferson until Wilson actually went to Congress to deliver the address, when did it become a "rite of custom?" Sending a simple letter down the street would save us all several hours of obligatory applause.

Some in this Chamber are new to the House and Senate

But certainly not many.

Each of us is guided by our own convictions--and to these we must stay faithful.

Uh... no. You're all public servants; your personal convictions must ultimately take a back-seat to the public interest. Unless, of course, we're finally ditching that silly "republicanism" idea.

to solve problems, not leave them to future generations

Like the national debt? How's that been going for the past six years?

to guard America against all evil, and to keep faith with those we have sent forth to defend us.

The ones sworn to defend the federal constitution against all enemies, domestic as well as foreign?

Our citizens don't much care which side of the aisle we sit on--as long as we are willing to cross that aisle when there is work to be done.

What a change two months make. To keep it short, I'll just say that, if the citizens really don't care, there'd be no political parties to begin with (let alone epithets like "Republican In Name Only").

First, we must balance the federal budget.

Only took you how long to come to this conclusion?

We can do so without raising taxes.

Yes, because this strategy of balancing the budget without taxation has worked so well in the previous Republican majorities in Congress.

What we need to do is impose spending discipline in Washington, D.C.

Yeah, we can veto the Highway Bill! Oh wait...

Even worse, over 90 percent of earmarks never make it to the floor of the House and Senate--they are dropped into Committee reports that are not even part of the bill that arrives on my desk.

That means 10% could have been fixed by a veto.

You did not vote them into law. (...) Yet they are treated as if they have the force of law.

Kinda like your signing statements?

expose every earmark to the light of day and to a vote in Congress

Won't work. Aside from the problems of a federal legislature that doesn't actually read what they're voting on (and giving clever, Orwellian names to bills to encourage votes), exposing something to light and hoping that shame will make it go away only works when nobody else is doing it; if we were talking about six or seven sneaky little earmarks, sure, but the public (let alone Congress) doesn't have the time or the patience to sift through thousands upon thousands of such earmarks.

Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid are commitments of conscience--and so it is our duty to keep them permanently sound. Yet we are failing in that duty - and this failure will one day leave our children with three bad options: huge tax increases, huge deficits, or huge and immediate cuts in benefits.

How is this unique to Social Security (et al)? Couldn't the same be generally said of the "??? and spend" budgets the Republican Congress has given us for the past six years and President Bush himself has signed into law?

Everyone in this Chamber knows this to be true--yet somehow we have not found it in ourselves to act.

Perhaps the problem is that the first part of this statement isn't true.

Five years ago, we rose above partisan differences to pass the No Child Left Behind Act--preserving local control, raising standards in public schools, and holding those schools accountable for results. And because we acted, students are performing better in reading and math, and minority students are closing the achievement gap.

Is this because we're improving education or lowering standards? It seems to me that federal control here acts as a ceiling as well as a floor for state education standards.

We can lift student achievement even higher by giving local leaders flexibility to turn around failing schools... and by giving families with children stuck in failing schools the right to choose something better.

Mutually exclusive. How can one turn around a "failing school" if there are no longer any students enrolled? And what about allowing parents to withdraw children from schools that are, at least on paper, passing? As I said, it has the potential to act as a ceiling as well as a floor.

And we can make sure our children are prepared for the jobs of the future, and our country is more competitive, by strengthening math and science skills.

Science skills? What's your party's stance on Darwin again?

When it comes to healthcare, government has an obligation to care for the elderly, the disabled, and poor children.

Everybody else can go fuck themselves.

We will meet those responsibilities.

By passing the buck through privatization!

First, I propose a standard tax deduction for health insurance that will be like the standard tax deduction for dependents

More Byzantine tax laws! That "cha-ching" sound you just heard was the value of H&R Block's and TurboTax's stock jumping.

With this reform, more than 100 million men, women, and children who are now covered by employer-provided insurance will benefit from lower tax bills.

So all those people who weren't paying for health insurance will have even more money to not pay into health insurance! With his earlier claim that wages were rising during his administration, American workers should already have the money to pay for the insurance. So either the claim that wages are rising is a bald-faced lie (quite possible), or the American people have already shown that they are more interested in relying on emergency rooms and wishful thinking to "maintain" their health.

For Americans who now purchase health insurance on their own, my proposal would mean a substantial tax savings--$4,500 for a family of four making $60,000 a year.

The problem with overly-complicated tax laws is that it renders these little cherry-picked anecdotes absolutely meaningless. What if they make $59,999 a year?

Changing the tax code is a vital and necessary step to making healthcare affordable for more Americans.

Introducing yet another possible deduction doesn't mean that people know about its existence, let alone that they'd actually try to claim it. There's nothing automatic about the process.

My second proposal is to help the states that are coming up with innovative ways to cover the uninsured.

Because "get the fuck out of their way" is never an option. The reason states are exploring these "innovative ways" is because the federal government has proven itself to be a part of the problem, not the solution.

States that make basic private health insurance available to all their citizens should receive federal funds to help them provide this coverage to the poor and the sick.

And these federal funds would come from where?

I have asked the Secretary of Health and Human Services to work with Congress to take existing federal funds and use them to create "Affordable Choices" grants.

If we truly had "existing federal funds," what's with the national debt? Of course "taking existing federal funds" is a euphemism for "defunding other federal programs." So, again: where would these federal funds come from?

There are many other ways that Congress can help. We need to expand Health Savings Accounts

Are they actually popular? Are meaningful numbers of people actually signing up for these? Are they truly being used for healthcare purposes and not, say, as a general tax shelter?

Yet even with all these steps, we cannot fully secure the border unless we take pressure off the border--and that requires a temporary worker program.

This presumes that they want to live and work in the United States temporarily rather than permanently.

As a result, they won't have to try to sneak in

Yeah, they'd just have to disappear when it's time to go home, like the 9/11 hijackers.

and that will leave border agents free to chase down drug smugglers, and criminals, and terrorists.

Because once they're actually inside the border, it's the states' problems, not the Border Patrol's.

We will enforce our immigration laws at the worksite, and give employers the tools to verify the legal status of their workers--so there is no excuse left for violating the law.

Employers are able to violate the law at whim because the workers are willing co-conspirators. So, again, the guest worker program only works when the workers actually want to stop working when their visa expires.

Convictions run deep in this Capitol when it comes to immigration. Let us have a serious, civil, and conclusive debate--so that you can pass, and I can sign, comprehensive immigration reform into law.

I'll even throw in some signing statements!

Extending hope and opportunity depends on a stable supply of energy that keeps America's economy running and America's environment clean.

Well, "clean" as far as the EPA is concerned, at least.

by even greater use of clean coal technology

Case in point.

We must continue investing in new methods of producing ethanol--using everything from wood chips, to grasses, to agricultural wastes.

We need more earmarks for loyal Republican constituents!

Let us build on the work we have done and reduce gasoline usage in the United States by 20 percent in the next ten years

Will this actually be across the board, or will we continue to cherry-pick categories like "cars" and "light trucks?"

At the same time, we need to reform and modernize fuel economy standards for cars the way we did for light trucks.

That answers my question.

So as we continue to diversify our fuel supply, we must also step up domestic oil production in environmentally sensitive ways.

Because adopting a national "Fuck the Middle East" attitude isn't enough to convince the American people to individually tighten their belts that much more?

I ask Congress to double the current capacity of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Because our current and previous presidents have demonstrated that "strategic" is in the political sense, our president is effectively saying that Congress needs to double his ability to putz around with gasoline prices. If these are truly reserves and we are truly reducing our consumption of oil, why do we need more?

A future of hope and opportunity requires a fair, impartial system of justice.

Military commissions?

The lives of citizens across our Nation are affected by the outcome of cases pending in our federal courts.

Hepting v. AT&T?

And we have a shared obligation to ensure that the federal courts have enough judges to hear those cases and deliver timely rulings.

Obviously, the solution here is to take away their responsibilities so that they have less to do! Military commissions for everybody!

For all of us in this room, there is no higher responsibility than to protect the people of this country from danger.

No, the highest responsibility everybody in that room has, the one they took an oath to, is to support the constitution.

We have added many critical protections to guard the homeland.

And many more criticized protections.

Yet one question has surely been settled--that to win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy.

He's in a cave in Afghanistan or Pakistan somewhere. Find him yet?

The enemy knows that the days of comfortable sanctuary, easy movement, steady financing, and free flowing communications are long over.

Maybe our problem with our budget during this period of war is that, for the American people, those days continue unabated (except for the actual soldiers). Wouldn't the American people be willing to pay for even the unpopular Iraqi war through, say, an increased federal gasoline tax? It would certainly be poetic, as well as reducing gasoline consumption.

We stopped an al Qaeda plot to fly a hijacked airplane into the tallest building on the West Coast. We broke up a Southeast Asian terrorist cell grooming operatives for attacks inside the United States. We uncovered an al Qaeda cell developing anthrax to be used in attacks against America. And just last August, British authorities uncovered a plot to blow up passenger planes bound for America over the Atlantic Ocean. For each life saved, we owe a debt of gratitude to the brave public servants who devote their lives to finding the terrorists and stopping them.

Note that "Iraq" appears nowhere in this paragraph.

In recent times, it has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shia extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East.

If the Shia and the Suni can agree, perhaps the problem really is with our foreign policy after all.

Hezbollah--a group second only to al Qaeda in the American lives it has taken.

Call me calloused, but how close a second? And what percentage of those Americans killed by Hezbollah also had an Israeli passport and happened to be in Israel at the time?

And so it remains the policy of this government to use every lawful and proper tool

And more than a few unlawful ones?

Free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies

So it was only after we became less free through the collusion of the White House and Congress that we finally launched our filibustering campaign in Iraq? I get it now!

So we advance our own security interests by helping moderates, reformers, and brave voices for democracy.

And what of the tin-plated dictators we continue to support, the future Sadam Husseins?

And in 2005, the Iraqi people held three national elections--choosing a transitional government... adopting the most progressive, democratic constitution in the Arab world

As our president has been so kind to demonstrate to us again and again, a constitution only holds meaning if the government binds itself to it.

This is not the fight we entered in Iraq, but it is the fight we are in.

Oh, it's the same fight, we just deluded ourselves when we got into it.

Yet it would not be like us to leave our promises unkept,

Actually, it would, or our friend and ally Saddam Hussein would still be in power.

Our goal is a democratic Iraq that upholds the rule of law, respects the rights of its people, provides them security, and is an ally in the war on terror.

How about a federal government like that first?

So we are deploying reinforcements of more than 20,000 additional soldiers and Marines to Iraq.

Note that "asking permission" appears nowhere in this sentence. And twenty thousand? What's recruitment looking like right now again?

My fellow citizens, our military commanders and I have carefully weighed the options.

And I've asked those that didn't agree with me to resign.

We discussed every possible approach.

A few years too late.

If American forces step back before Baghdad is secure, the Iraqi government would be overrun by extremists on all sides.

I'll be calloused again: an Iraq embroiled in civil war would be as dangerous to us as Somalia

I have spoken with many of you in person.

Just not the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

Tonight I ask the Congress to authorize an increase in the size of our active Army and Marine Corps by 92,000 in the next five years.

What? Are there not enough slots for eager volunteers to fill? Are Army and Marine recruiters having to turn people away?

A second task we can take on together is to design and establish a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps. Such a corps would function much like our military reserve.

Yeah! We could call it the National Guard! Who will be the reserve for this new reserve reserve reserve when the next Katrina comes along?

It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them.

Oh, my mistake, he's talking about Haliburton.

Americans can have confidence in the outcome of this struggle--because we are not in this struggle alone.

Poland!

we are pursuing diplomacy to help bring peace to the Holy Land,

"Holy Land?" Way to reach out to the non-Abrahamic citizens.

Our work in the world is also based on a timeless truth: To whom much is given, much is required.

Is this where Bush volunteers to be the first sitting president since Washington to personally lead troops into battle?

Dikembe Mutombo grew up in Africa, amid great poverty and disease. He came to Georgetown University on a scholarship to study medicine - but Coach John Thompson got a look at Dikembe and had a different idea. Dikembe became a star in the NBA, and a citizen of the United States. But he never forgot the land of his birth - or the duty to share his blessings with others. He has built a brand new hospital in his hometown.

For a president who claims to be committed to education, I'm not sure using an example of someone accomplishing more as a professional athlete than through their course of studies is a good thing to bring up. Or will he soon be introducing the "No Basketball Player Left Behind" Act?

In such courage and compassion, ladies and gentlemen, we see the spirit and character of America--and these qualities are not in short supply.

After all, note that none of the examples listed hold any elected office.