Ah, Slippery Sony. The corporation that was caught embedding DRM malware into all the audio CD's they produced is back, this time pretending that they can dictate every piece of software that is to be run on RISC architecture. Apple thought the same thing back in the 80's. Not the best strategy.

This is an experimental business philosophy for a hardware manufacturer: Squash any and all unauthorized development. Limit your hardware's functionality. Micro-manage the end-user (read: info-peasant) experience. Control everything. Charge for everything.

I was about to buy a PS3 because i want a console that i can tinker with and use for all sorts of things. That's the only reason i would EVER spend so much money on a console. Now I think i'll just stick with a laptop... and teach my neighbor's children how to find playstation ROM's on the internet for free.

Believe it or not, there are rural areas in the United States where you can't get DSL or cable. Dial-up is the only option. A lot of old-timers out here, let me tell you what!

not me. i hate my job. everybody laughs at me and calls me names. i get paid diddly-squat. everybody picks on the computer guy, but everybody wants his help. "hey, fix this, hey fix that, what do you mean you're tired, all you do is sit around on the computer all day, what do we pay you for, blah blah..." i'll show 'em. i'll show 'em real good.

From a business perspective, it's so much more prudent to give the money to lawyers and own the kid's ass in court (then steal his work later).

Remember: Corporations = Zerg. any money going to Blizzard is, in the long run, used against the human race.

E-readers are marketed towards professionals who are functionally illiterate and must make reading fun with overpriced gadgets. They can't remember what they read because their eyes just gloss over the words they don't understand.

1 word: hoax. The costs of faking a mars landing are minimal compared to the outrageous profits that could be reaped. Compared to the new york stock exchange, it could even be viewed as an extremely low-risk, extremely high-yield venture. Here's the business plan in a nutshell:

2006-2011: Conduct a Media blitz to excite the general public: -$2 billion
2011-2012: Lobby congress to finance a 1 trillion dollar project: -$5 billion
2012-2022: collect 50 billion dollars annually: +$1 trillion
2023: Conduct elaborate hoax with the help of a major hollywood producer (stanley kubrick is dead, unfortunately; he would have been the most qualified): -$20 billion
Net profit: +$973 billion

Tempting?

I wonder why they forgot to mention this feature in their TV commercial. After all, "clouds" are the latest greatest thing, and we should use them as much as possible! But why only swap? why not upload EVERY memory address and every processor cycle to the cloud? Why not outsource every memory address to an ipv6 address on the cloud while implementing a web 3.0 solution as we think outside the box?

my girlfriend already wants one!

Remember hearing all those suppressed studies about CDMA phones linked to brain cancer?

Well, smart meters have about 100x amplitude of a CDMA cell phone.

That's why people are fighting to get them banned in Sonoma, Mendocino, and Lake counties.

obviously there is a difference between obama and bush. I voted for Obama. I'd never vote for Bush. Bush lost two popular elections and served two terms as president. The shadow government was never elected, so we can't vote them out no matter how we cast our ballots. I'm a pacifist and i USED TO support gun control, but it sure is starting to look like we're running out of options for protecting ourselves from the billionaire liars and thieves that dominate all policy (foreign and domestic) and the courts that protect them.

Most macs ARE PC's, by the way. Windows could conceivably do the same thing, but it wouldn't keep Windows from sucking. If you control zee OS, you control zee cloud!

All it would take is an os X "update", and every iMac becomes a cloud server, hosting its applications (like iMovie) to iPhone users. The end user will never suspect a thing!

The log-in-through-the-mothership-model, aka the All-your-box-are-belong-to-us model, will be of vital importance of the massive botnet wars of the coming decade, but will certainly be a short-lived topology. Better to run the OS on your hard disk, for sure.

The objective here for Apple, obviously, is to produce hardware that's largely incapable of doing this. but it'll look really sheek.

No, I did not get those backwards. SIPR is secure and NIPR is non-classified.

When wikileaks and wikileaks-type sites become common-place enough, the US government won't need to "make sure" that other governments are being transparent any more than other governments are making sure that the US secrets get on Wikileaks. And yes, these sites WILL become common; already in the US, law enforcement officials are beginning to take advantage of their own local "cop watch" sites to reveal corruption. When this activity becomes publicly acceptable, whistleblowers will no longer need to be anonymous; they will proudly expose the lies of their government employers to the public.

It's called SIPRNet, by the way. It's always been a big No-No to transfer any device from a NIPR (non-classified internet) client to a SIPR client, of course. But it happens anyway. If they want to stop Wikileaks, Wikileaks clones, and "insurance" torrents, then the governments of the world are going to need to cut out the James Bond / evil scientist bullshit and embrace 100% transparency.

No need to fight censorship with censorship. Just "leak" a few million credit card numbers on the Mastercard wikipedia site. Folks WILL think twice about using credit cards.

That sets a very bad precedent. Blocking communication between countries amounts to censorship. Besides, there have GOT to be some honest Russian web sites out there! I know it!

Pac-Man isn't a character, he's a yellow dot. Yellow dots with mouths were popularized in the 1960's and orginated much earlier; Wal-Mart can't claim ownership, and neither can Namco.

Pac man is also deeply ingrained in (and is therefore part of) my unconscious mind. Corporate ownership of any part of my unconscious mind is problematic to me. But that's just me.