Sure their business will be going away in the next few years, but they don't retailers don't have to help with this deception. If I were Gamestation or GAME, I'd print up some "Resale warning!" stickers, then put them on the relevant boxes on the shelves. You could use amber ones for when the multiplayer isn't transferable, and red ones for single-player content, along with the price of re-purchasing that bit of the game. Print up some posters by the till that explain what the stickers are. That way the game's true value is shown where it should be - stuck on the box along with the purchase price.

btrfs is tanatlizing for VMs because of the copy-on-write file behaviour (i.e. "cp --reflink a b" creates b instantly regardless of the size of a), but http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/devel/2011-July/154251.html is still an issue, as far as I'm aware. So storing VMs, where you access them with O_SYNC, just gets slower over time until it's unusable. I'm not quite brave enough to suggest that any of our customers use it, at least until there's a working fsck.

Do you carry rocks in your pockets? :) I have had mine over a year, and apart from not putting it in the same pocket as my keys, I'm not too precious about it. A few scuffs around the outside, but the screen still looks fine.

I understand what sandboxing is. I understand that Mac owners have root/sudo access. I'm not even sure you read what I wrote. I see a business and technical benefit to Apple removing root access, and speculated it will happen in a future OS release, with app installs allowed only from the App Store. It will make Macs more secure, like iOS is, and will make more money for Apple. Why wouldn't they do it?

Back when I joined Slashdot in 98, FUD was the term we used for Microsoft spreading inaccurate gossip about Linux's potential, at a time when Linux was wobblier and harder to support than it is now. Or 15 years before that, IBM trash talking the competition to customers who were thinking of switching their expensive business systems to microcomputer upstarts. Now it's just a lazy ad hominem, to call someone a shill for an unspecified cause. What benefit does a "FUD"der gain from trash talking one OS platform over another? I've got an ISP of my own, my company owns literally thousands of different computers: Macs, Windows and Linux systems. I hate them all equally. Now engage with the argument or get off my lawn.

I think Apple is going to remove root access from the Mac in one or two more OS X updates, and you'll only be able to retain your root access by paying the small annual developer fee. It makes sense to cement their revenue stream from a platform that's still gaining users; the only question is when they can afford to throw the gauntlet down to Microsoft & Adobe.

For a home hub & router, the HP Microserver is pretty good: low-power AMD processor, 4 3.5" drive bays, gigabit ethernet, internal USB header and a very nice, small chassis. They are still selling in the UK for about £120 after cash back (hmm, pricier, $319 from newegg). Maybe that's a bit more than you wanted to spend but you can run a normal Linux distro.

I find it very hard to sleep through http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P5qbcRAXVk

Though sometimes I panic and hide under a cardboard box instead of opening the laptop.

Looking for a cheap coupé, I came close to buying the beautiful RX-8, but the fuel economy is just hopeless, and I read that it basically bleeds oil. If you see an RX-8 for a suspiciously cheap price and a seller with a big sad face, I figured that car is an auto-vampire, sucking its owner dry in petrol and maintenance costs before moving on to the next victim. Owners have a "300 club" where you try to make it clock over 300 miles on its 61 litre fuel tank without having to walk to the next petrol station. Planet-burning fun :)

Because prosecution (i.e. under criminal law, which is what you're talking about) isn't something that can be negotiated away or altered by contract. If you've committed a criminal offence, the victim does not sue, it's The Crown that prosecutes (in the UK at least).

By entering into this Agreement, you and EA expressly waive the right to a trial by jury ... It covers any and all disputes between us ("Disputes"), including without limitation ... claims arising out of or relating to any aspect of the relationship between us, whether based in contract, tort, statute, fraud, misrepresentation or any other legal theory.

I'm pretty certain this is a ridiculously unenforceable and unfair contract term, at least in the UK. They are saying that after signing up for their game service, EA can misrepresent, hurt or outright scam you ... and you agree that you won't sue them, no matter what they've done.

A thousand times YES. Together with a short repeat of necessary training if your save was weeks earlier. I've abandoned plenty of games where I've made progress, got distracted, then forgotten how to play or what I'm doing when I next reload. The result is usually repeated deaths, repeatedly hitting dead ends etc. I know games reviewers have to blast through a mega release in a weekend, but I don't think it's unreasonable for a normal to take MONTHS to finish the same game. Of course some times your skills are so rusty you've got no choice but to start over and build them again. But it's a shame where it's just lack of information, or forgotten button combinations that make the difference between finishing an old game and abandoning it.

I guess this is for Americans who think Fox News is the pinnacle of Murdoch's evil, or anyone under about 25! There's another Murdoch property, The Sun. Its circulation is still next-to-nothing in Liverpool 22 years after they published an infamous front page (THE TRUTH) lilbelling Liverpool Football Club fans. They blamed them for the Hillsborough football stadium crush, accusing fans of attacking the emergency services, urinating on dead bodies etc. For 22 years there's barely a newsagent in the city that will stock the paper, and it's the UK's biggest selling daily. News Of The World is (basically) the Sunday edition, and they are the first to call for lynch mobs whenever covering crimes against children

This is enormous news in the UK except of course in The Sun and the Times, both Murdoch papers. It's happening at a time when Murdoch wants to buy complete control of Sky, a deal which needs approval from the state. Our Prime Minister David Cameron pulls Christmas Crackers with the News of the World's former editor, who's at the centre of this scandal. And the NoTW's editor after her, Andy Coulson - Cameron appointed him as his party's communications director in 2007 - but he had to resign in January when it became clear he knew all about the illegal phone hacking. This man was in government until this surfaces.

So it's just the pinnacle of the bizarre relationship between the Murdoch press, our main political parties, and apparent public opinion. If advertisers and readers boycott the paper, which seems quite likely in the short term, you could only call it "a good start".

After screwing around moving from Unity to KDE 4.6 the other day, and finding that simply RESIZING A TERMINAL WINDOW stiffed my whole laptop, I tried xfce and my god - I forgot that's how the desktop used to work! The compositing & whizzy effects didn't work very well on an Apple last time I tried, so god knows why GNOME & KDE folks want to copy it. I'm back to a simple window manager and shell that works, and I'm not going to be talked out of them again for a while.

Not sure it affected the reading of the article. So it's a moo point.

SIP still seems alive and well though. They get a monthly revenue stream from that though; seems a slightly safer option for Skype users wanting interoperability.