It's really easy in the UK to get someone to publicly say sorry due to the lible laws. If you are sued for lible you have to prove that your statements are true. It's much cheaper to just apologise than go to court even if the truth is on your side.

I would not be the lease surprised if the apology was the result of a legal threat.

Google McLibel for an interesting case where someone refused to apologise for statements that a reasonable person would consider true.

The US attacked a building which was hosting a meeting of the elders trying to resolve the conflict.

The US involvement in Somalia make the situation incredibly fucking worse.

In most countries a ship with an armed crew is considered a pirate ship. You cannot dock at most ports around the world even if you are carrying only small arms.

So yes, you are missing something.

Also, in almost all cases of piracy around Somalia the crew and cargo have been released unharmed once the ransom has been paid. If you start arming crews you will have firefights, people will get injured. People will die. I consider that a bad thing, and I hope you do to.

A heightened U.N. naval presence around the area is making a bit of a difference. Support from the US would help (and considering the U.S. killed what was the government of Somalia and severely fucked up the country a few years back I they should contribute something other than telling people to arm their crews (which has been the advice from the U.S. administration under Nobel peace prize Obama)).

I have to say that the above point (visually impaired != blind) is highly relevant to the discussion.

Where I'm from someone can be registered blind yet still have some form of eye-sight. My grandfather visually impaired to the point of being considered legally blind, but still drove a car. While this was reckless and irresponsible, he could still do it. He got the best parking spaces too as he had a handicapped sticker for his car due to being visually impaired.

Many of the comments in this topic assume that visually impaired means completely blind, which is just plain wrong.

So if you have some moderator points, could you please be so kind as to mod up the parent. Thank you.

I use a Hori arcade stick to play guitar hero one handed on my PS3.

http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-zl-77-2-49-en-15-hori+stick-70-1rrr.html

It's totally playable, you're not using a pretend guitar (obviously), but it's still good fun.

I was given a Sparcstation 5 a few years ago that I have running faithfully as a home server and it draws less than 70 watts. It runs DNS, squid, OpenVPN and a few other things quite well (its running OpenBSD, but you could just as easily put Linux on there). You could pick up a similarly aged system that would have a low power requirement from ebay for well under $300. It's also better for the environment to re-use something that someone else would have otherwise thrown away than to buy something new.

Because it's really a publicity stunt from Microsoft trying to get the Xbox360 in the forefront of peoples minds in the lead up to Christmas.

The article reads like most of the marketing cover I see from Microsoft (and for that matter most other software companies).

Organisation X needed to do Y but the competing product was too expensive (in price/effort/time). Our product does Y at a fraction of the price/time/effort of our competitor.

The people at Orgaisation X are smart people who know all about Y and are very happy with our product.

From TFA:

I'm sorry, but Apples own dictionary app that will return the definition of the words "cunt" and "nigger", and I don't think there is anything more offensive.

The Blu Ray disc is pretty vital when you look at the sizes of PS3 exclusive titles. Liar (a much better game than reviews indicate) is about 25GB in size. Metal Gear Solid 4 is even larger and there's no disc swapping. There are already suggestions as to how much of a nightmare the latest Final Fantasy game will be if it is ever release on the XBox360 due to the number of DVDs required.

I have the 60GB European model that came with PS2 software support, and I have to say that it's compatibility with PS2 titles is pretty remarkable. When it was first released there were a lot of games that were listed as incompatible (such as Gran Turismo 4 and GTA III) that work great now due to firmware updates (I think around firmware 1.92 backwards compatibility got a lot better). I suspect that the US model with hardware support for PS2 titles may not have benefited as much from software updates. PS2 games (on the European model) can be upscaled to 1080p, and it's great to effectively have as many save games as you like rather than manage memory cards. I gave away my PS2 as I stopped using it.

Unfortunately they don't sell that model of the PS3 anymore, but there are quite a few gaming sites that it is still available from second hand (as well as eBay).

I often consider achievements and trophies to be rather lame versions of challenges that I used to create for myself once I'd finished a game on it's hardest setting. I remember trying to complete Another World without a single death, and playing through Half-Life left handed. I've always found that the tasks I set myself for games far more creative, interesting and rewarding than the arbitrary achievements or trophies in recent games. Oh, and in the first System Shock game I wandered around the space station trying to vaporise all of the corpses before the time limit ran out. I imagined once while I was doing this that if I was ever on trial for murder then this bizarre cadaver removal obsession might be used as evidence against me.

That was one of the things that was truly great in the first two Fallout games, the game would allow you to deviate greatly from the path the designers had anticipated and still keep going. They were great for playing the game totally in character. I still remember getting so annoyed by the president of Vault City that I decided to kill her, then ended up having to wipe all the inhabitants and I was still able to complete the game. In Fallout 3 someone in Rivet City kept passing me in the corridor and calling me a thief. After the third time he did this, acting in character, I shot him for his impudence. I could only knock him unconscious, and he kept getting back up regardless as to how many bullets I implanted into his skull. It was at that point for me that I realised that Fallout 3 was not the sequel I was looking for.

What I find shocking is that the judge believed the person who committed murder did not understand the consequences of his actions, but did not accept an insanity plea.

As I don't wish to be flamed I would also like to comment that I don't believe that video games cause insanity. Magical thinking is as likely to be influenced by books, advertising, cartoons, religion, comic-books (incidentally, I remember when comics were blamed for problem behaviours in children and adolescents before the focus of attention turned to videos, and to games), etc.

If someone does not understand that shooting someone could cause permanent injury (or permanent death) then they are a danger to themselves and to others, and should be treated for their mental illness. If the person in this case truly did not understand that shooting his parents would kill them then it is likely that he was suffering from a form of mental illness before he played Halo 3.

My toast got burnt sometime between 9:59:40 EST (Eastern Standard Time in New South Wales, GMT +10:00) and 10:00:00 EST (GMT +10:00) on Jan 1, 2008 which remarkably corresponds to within at most 20 seconds of the New Year in GMT. I have been making toast with this same wetware non-stop for more than twenty six years and other than the occasional lapse in concentration while speaking on the phone, I have not burnt toast more than 1 or 2 times in 2237 days of cumulative toasting. Nothing other than background processes were running through my mind at the time of the burning. Could this be a coincidence or was there some 2008/2009 rollover issue going on here? Has anyone (other than Zune 30GB owners) noticed similar year-end issues while operating toasters or electronic devices?

I'm a Highlander (I was born and live in the Highlands of Scotland). I haven't tried cutting peoples heads off with a sword yet, but maybe I should give it a shot to see what happens.

Thank you Slashdot for helping me with practical solutions to improve my life.