So? New York City is one of the hardest places in the world to keep a business open. Just don't go there if you care about the bans. Trust me, either they'll lift the ban or their customers will keep coming and they'll keep it up. Find another cafe. Simple. There's probably another one a block down. If you can't find a cafe in New York that caters to your personality then you're lazy and not trying.

And yet, you're posting on Slashdot....

Every single time I turn that hunk of garbage on I have to update it before I can do anything. Annoying is what it was 5 updates ago. I'm about to just go get a dedicated Blu-ray player and Sony can kiss my...

He's not really wrong necessarily, but every piece of software is a new security risk. Games, email programs, you name it its a security risk. Its obviously just a bunch of PR to sell an app. Open Source's greatest risk is also its best potential strength. Because hackers and anyone else can see the underlying code, the security holes that a hacker may exploit will be patched in record time, possibly even by the hacker himself. Meanwhile closed source can only rely on internal resources, not a bad thing necessarily but different. The truth is that Open Source is great, but then again so is closed. Six of one half dozen of another. I really see plenty of room for these two differing development styles to coexist.

While the rest of your post is good the first sentence is patently untrue. Google's release is used as is on at least one reference production phone, the Nexus. They provide a complete operating system, manufacturers choose to differentiate, they are not forced. The driver issue is true, but the Nexus is made by Samsung, so in my book they have no excuse whatsoever.

I expected this exact behavior a few months ago when the upgrade that we Galaxy S users were PROMISED by the end of summer was not forthcoming. Samsung thinks that by simply providing new phones they can erase the memory of that outright lie to their customers. This is not the case for me at least as I will be changing back to the iPhone soon enough. The only question left is AT&T or pay early termination and jump ship to Verizon. Samsung lies = customer lost, goodbye.

Yep, its beautifully smart to sue Blizzard over this. They are only the first or second highest grossing video game company in the world. Think about it, World of Warcraft has approximately 12 million subscribers according to Blizzard. That's $14.99 x 12, 000, 000 = $179, 880, 000 per month, or $2, 158, 560, 000 a year, that's a little over $2 BILLION! That's ONE GAME and they bought Activision so they have many more. Your piddly little patent trolling is going to be a speedbump to them and they are going to make you feel small and insignificant, because you are. Better luck next time, and it won't be with the biggest producer of portable games in the world, Zynga, either. The only smart play they have is to settle out of court if offered. If I was Blizzard I wouldn't offer on general principle. I would bankrupt them and laugh in their faces.

Oh, quit whining. The day of retailers relying on tricking customers into buying overpriced wares is over, deal with it.

Everyone is completely up in arms over this and it kills me. The achievements have a much greater impact than most seem to realize. Starcraft morphed into practically a sport in certain places, especially Korea, for example. So cheating the single player game and receiving the achievements is a real issue for Blizzard. They run high level very expensive tournaments that can be, and are being affected by these cheats. Sure it seems to be constrained to the single player campaign but what does that do to the multiplayer community that know they could easily be cheated at any time. Blizzard has to do something about it immediately or risk a lot of backlash from a community that was very much a consideration in the development of the game.

This is really happening due to the difference in savings between the hardback and its ebook and the paperback and its ebook. During hardcover release the ebook is typically $10-$12 which is a savings of around $10-$15 depending on the discounts most book retailers place on hardcovers. Paperbacks are around $7.99-$8.99 and the ebooks released with them are $6.69 or so for a savings of about $2.30 at best. For hardcovers this is a good deal and if all you want is to read the book on the New York Times bestseller list then this is for you, but the savings for paperbacks hardly make it worthwhile. So for the person who likes to read some of the New York Times bestseller list or has a good reading group an ebook reader is gold, but for more casual readers that like to pick up novels that form holes in their repertoire, ebooks need a little work still. All in all, though, I see a good use for their existence.

2100 people is absolutely NOT a sufficient sample. If half the people in California are adult then that is a population of 18.5 million, my bet is its much higher than that. 2100 is 0.011% of that 18.5 million person population which nowhere near enough of a sample size. To get a sample that small also means that like 2 people were working the survey at 1 location. This is statistical maneuvering at its worst. Not only are they reporting a bogus survey but they assume we're all idiots who don't understand our mathematics. Where did this insufficient sample come from, hmmm? Outside Walmart on a Saturday afternoon in one location. Please quit insulting our intelligence and do something truly worthwhile like conduction surveys that aren't bull. Your opinion on video games is your own and I respect that. If you want to effect change in how the nation deals with something then act like you have some sense. Conduct real polls with good statistical analysis and stop yelling at the top of your lungs about nothing. In the end you come off sounding at best like ignorant stay at home Moms without any sense while at worst you sound like a strange desert religious cult screaming about being right without any good arguments that make sense to anyone but you. By the way, if the poll you commissioned was done this way without your approval, FIRE them and get a real company to handle it.

"One generation does not have the right to determine availability forever", um, actually whichever generation or people are alive at the moment pretty much have the right to do whatever the heck they want. Your righteous indignation means exactly squat. I may agree that we should not waste what we have but the current generation has the right to do anything it wants because none of the future generations have a voice or can stop them. Let's refrain from saying idiotic crap and focus on reality. In reality what you mean to say is that, "one generation should not allow itself to determine availability forever." I don't have any Dodo bird meat available but what can I do about it a past generation gave itself the right to determine its availability forever and I'm screwed.

Personally I think this is the single worst idea that publisher's have ever had in history, and here's why: The advertisement will yank the reader straight out of the story contained in the book. If the ads are at the beginning or like some books, especially book lines like D&D, in the back of the book, then it may not be bad. However, I'm not a naive little moron who thinks they mean unobtrusive short little ads. They probably want to put half page and full page blinking rainbow colored (when the color e-ink screens hit) ads every other page or so. Personally, I wouldn't mind paying a little bit more than the current prices for eBooks, but it may kill the market for folks like me who don't see why I should pay the same price for vapor that I can pay for a nice good looking hardbound block on my library shelf. If they can somehow find a way to put in the ads in a way that will make people see them without injecting them into the prose itself, then I may say, "Cool, this works go for it."

and Mario Bros. came in 1983 before they ever thought of being "super". Super Mario Bros. is the first game that actually made me want a home console however. Its the reason I begged my parents for a Nintendo Entertainment System and forever made me the gaming geek I am today. Oh, and yes, I realize how that statement dates me..., and you're all quite welcome. Without us wannabe game geeks at home in the mid 80s, the Playstation 3, Wii, and XBox may not have become the systems they are today. According to Wikipedia, Frog is the earliest ancestor of the platform genre. It was produced in 1978 by Gremlin. While I was old enough to appreciate a game like that in 1978, I never actually saw it in the wild. Space Invaders and Pac Man are all I really remember from the late 70s up until Donkey Kong in 1981. By the way I agree the the last line of the article author, "My vote goes for Star Control 2." Star Control 2 is one of my favorite games ever made. I loved it.

Possible legal entanglements aside, I think Microsoft has handled this admirably. They started out on the conservative side of the equation and let their customers dictate their future decisions. After re-evaluating the circumstances they have allowed certain things into their online profiles while maintaining a serious no tolerance attitude towards misuse of certain terms. This is as balanced an approach as I've seen, and even if the legality of the issues was a prominent factor in the decision, I like that large corporations such as Microsoft are not waiting for litigation before changing internal policy. This indicates a major shift in how a business handles things internally. A large corporation like Microsoft leads just because of its market dominance and size. Where they go, others follow. This is ultimately good news. Let's not spoil the good things a company with past transgressions does. Instead let's be vocal about our appreciation of their decision.