Well, yes, that helps, but you still need the disk to be recognized in order to play it. I've seen Fable 2, Assassins Creed 2, and one other game go bad due to scratches. It's not the environment, since the xbox360 always sits horizontally on a very sturdy piece of furniture, which itself rests on carpeting. The only other electronics on this large piece are a cable modem, wireless router, DVD player, and LCD TV. The only possible source of external vibration would be the DVD player, and it is never used while the Xbox is on plus it's fairly far removed. So, it's the xbox, not abuse.

It also scratches optical media if you don't move it while they're playing. I have seen this myself, and infer that internal vibration (fan + player itself) is sufficient to cause it. That's with one of the previous revs (purchased late 2008), so I don't know if the new rev is any better.

Putting the power supply back in the console itself instead of a brick outside it. That's adding a heat source.

MS solves this problem by making the case smaller and putting another heat source inside the case. Now, that's engineering!

Sure, most web surfing/e-mail doesn't need more than 0.8-1.0 Mbps. Depending on the sites, even those speeds might be overkill. However, tethering to use for streaming video ups the requirements. You definitely need better than 1.0 Mbps average for something like Hulu, for instance, or if you download large files.

The way I see it, cell phones via 4G have the potential to replace home broadband (and cable/satellite eventually) just like they're well on their way to replace landlines. If they can provide reliable 5M/500k D/U at a reasonable price, why bother with (cable/FIOS/satellite) modems at home?

Or tethering.

While freenet is a great idea, it doesn't seem to be gaining much traction. According to http://emu.freenetproject.org/pipermail/chat/2010-April/000009.html there's only about 20k users.

The gp contended "They take all our tax money and return nothing. They dumb down the rest of the nation, and they are also probably largely responsible for most of the failed mortgages." I disproved the first, with a cite showing that Texas net loses money to the feds. "Dumbing down" is a matter of political opinion, as one can view the actions of the Texas schools as an attempt to undo decades of PC dumbing down of history. Another poster pointed out that Texas had among the lowest rate of foreclosure in the nation. Thus, 2/3 of the contentions the gp made were proven wrong, and the other is largely a matter of opinion.

Texas pays more to the feds than it gets back (http://www.taxfoundation.org/research/show/266.html).

I concur, I used 2k back in the day as well. It could run anything XP could run, and usually faster and more stable. I still prefer it, really, since it's so lightweight and stable, but you haven't been able to update it (DirectX etc) in years, so it really can't be used as a cutting edge gaming platform anymore.

Exactly, which is why I tend to think of the single player version of the game as just a training exercise for multi-player. That really only works for FPS games, though.

Well, space research started in the late 50's, and Apollo was over and done by the very early 70's. Expecting a benefit in 10-15 years isn't exactly short-sided. Instead, we had the economic malaise of the period. The space program has always been about bread and circuses, so once the show is over all you have is nice memories of essentially meaningless stunts.

I guess that's why the '70s were such a golden economic age, with low inflation, low unemployment, and high Dow. Oh wait...

Yeah, sure, but how often does that happen? When chemical plants fail, it's usually very dramatic with no sensors required to alert people. This whole idea looks like a solution in search of a problem at best, and possibly sinister with just a bit of speculation on alternative uses.

Well, it doesn't make sense to do it from a (short-term) economic perspective, but if you look at it from the point of view of long-term or non-economic perspectives, it could make excellent sense. For instance, if you severely hurt the economy of the US, the end effect would be lower investment in everything, including technology. Thus, the military advantage the US enjoys now predominantly due to better tech could be eroded over the course of a few decades. That's just one scenario, of course, and how realistic it is depends entirely on the short-term/long-term plans of any loaning country that sees the US as a potential threat.