In another story, somebody had an idea to crush unemployment - move to a 3-day weekend. Since companies would get 20% less time out of everybody, they'd have to hire more people. For the same pay, everybody would get more leisure time. Simple!

The Wii can at least play DVDs. I bought the PS3 in large part because it can play BluRay disks, the only HD disk format in use. It's easier to justify paying ~$100 more than a stand-alone BluRay player and get a high-end gaming system. Without that, the Wii U has to completely stand on its own as a gaming system, taking up more space in your crowded cabinet. Maybe they have better data than I, and know that everybody that would want a BluRay player already has one.

I hope they'll at least play nice with Netflix streaming, Amazon On Demand, and such. I could buy that a large chunk of the population might skip BluRay disks altogether and just watch streaming movies and shows.

Really? That's pretty much the saddest thing I've ever heard!

Nice! Please to feed parent many mod points.

You hit a nerve with me. I wanted to watch a movie earlier in the week, and I hadn't changed my password or done the update yet since the whole PSN debacle. It didn't even register that there was a BluRay disk in the slot. After resetting my password and doing the mandatory software update, I could finally watch the movie. Thanks, Sony.

(sigh) It still works better than my old Samsung BluRay player, which I had to ship back to them a couple of times, and I like that I can play a game occasionally when I have time, so I'll stick with it. I really think that if the XBOX 360 had a BluRay drive (even as an add-on), Sony would not be selling nearly as many PS3s.

Yeah, it's kind of ironic. The places that get the most snow generally don't have snow days, since they have the systems in place to deal with the snow; an army of snow plows, reliable (ish) public transportation, etc. I had several snow days growing up in Virginia, which occasionally gets freakish snow, but not often enough to warrant a lot of snow-clearing equipment. My wife grew up in Chicago, and remembers school being canceled only once, when the wind chill was -50 and they couldn't have kids freezing into solid chunks waiting for the bus.

Thank you! So many people seem to be missing this point. Making copies for educational use is supposed to be allowed under copyright law.

The other thing that Japan is known for is going from cheap, low quality cars to having some of the highest quality cars in the world. Was there a "shock" event that caused that as well? Genuinely curious.

Couldn't they have used the email address on the account to send a security token, something like that?

"An email has been sent to ********@yahoo.com with your confirmation code. Please check your email and enter this code to continue."

Overall, wow - using the stolen information to re-register your account? Why bother making people change their password then? Heaping spoonful of FAIL.

If they could do that, they would, wouldn't they? The studios bent Blockbuster and Netflix over the barrel and made them buy "rentable" versions, sure. But once Netflix has bought them, they're pretty much free to use them as they wish, rent them out to as many people as they want. The studios can't retroactively go back and say "hey, that movie from the 1990's that is suddenly popular? Pull it out of circulation." Also look at Redbox - they're independently owned, and the owners generally just go to Walmart and buy the movies and rent them out to people. There's nothing the studios can do about it. The only weapon the studios have is the time window. They'll sell the movies to Blockbuster first (at a higher price) and hold off selling them to Walmart for a few months.

For digital, they have a lot more control for some reason, even though it should be the same thing. I see stuff disappear off of Netflix Streaming all of the time.

This would require me to plan ahead what I'm going to watch that night. In which case, I could just plan ahead a couple of days, and get the DVD itself. The beauty of Netflix streaming is that I can watch whatever the hell I feel like whenever I want. Hung over Saturday morning? Watch a bunch of episodes of an old show you missed. Want something on while you're doing homework? Watch a dumb zombie action flick.

The real Netflix fix is for broadband companies to get off their collective asses and invest in their infrastructure. I live in Chicago, one of the most densely populated cities in North America, and my broadband speeds are middle of the road compared to most of the world, and yet more expensive. And even so, I can watch HD movies on Netflix streaming after only a few seconds of buffering.

Sure. But I would argue that if I'm sober, I have the right to drive from one place to the other, and not be forced to stop and have my car and belongings searched. That's why people have an issue with the checkpoints - for every 1 drunk driver you might catch, many more innocent drivers are subjected to a search. A search that you could reasonably argue is unconstitutional.

I know what you mean, but ... have you ever pulled out one of those old books and read them? If so, how many? If all you had to do was replace the books that you actually might re-read from time to time, I don't think it'd be too expensive. I'm getting pretty comfortable living only in my Kindle. I have a paper book that I bought several months ago, I never get around to reading it, because it's so much less convenient than my e-reader, which is always in my bag anyway.

Also, via OverDrive, you can get library books on your Kindle now (and other e-readers). So you don't even have to necessarily buy your old books if you really don't want to, you can just check them out for free. Amazing. http://content.usatoday.com/communities/technologylive/post/2011/04/amazon-to-launch-library-lending-for-kindle-books/1

(Whoosh!)

True, but the payment processor is not generally "online" to the world. They can lock their systems down, and only let their corporate customers communicate to them through secure, encrypted channels. They could even white-list IPs, and so on. They don't need to even be visible to the rest of the world. Doesn't mean they can't be hacked, but they should still be a much smaller target than the PSN.