Posted 10/03/2009 at 04:23:46pm

More than doubling the transistor count to 2.15 billion is amazing.  Of course, I'm going to wait to see if NVIDIA can beat AMD's offering...and see who has better Linux support!

Posted 09/23/2009 at 05:52:20am

Hopefully, the latest video drivers from ATI will work on Linux and distros like Ubuntu will support it!

Posted 08/25/2009 at 12:03:29pm

I don't understand why no one has brought up the new jersey lawsuit over hotchickswithdouchebags.com. The court basically held that calling someone a douchebag wasn't defamatory.

Posted 06/01/2009 at 01:20:23pm

Twitter is marketed towards older people (think of all the exposure on CNN) while Facebook is marketed primarily towards students.

I get the best of both worlds by having Twitter update my Facebook feed!

Posted 04/22/2009 at 03:25:12pm

I never owned a laptop before.  There were way too many compromises.  Too big, too expensive, too underpowered.  The Asus EeePC got the price/feature/weight ratio right for me.

Posted 04/21/2009 at 02:35:01pm

Eee PCs can be found in the $100-$200 range refurbished.  If you don't care about portability and size and price, splurge on an old notebook.

Posted 04/21/2009 at 02:33:00pm

I own an Asus EeePC.  I love it.  It is hackable.  You can install Ubuntu on it.  It is a handy dandy device.  Its great for commuting since its light or checking your e-mail or surfing the web at Starbucks.  Students seem to love it.

The problem is that the screen isn't big enough, its still too heavy (I wish it was less than a pound), Firefox greys out sometimes due to memory issues, and typing for longer than 10 minutes gets uncomfortable.  Also, battary life sucks.

Posted 04/12/2009 at 09:58:11am

Game rules are not copyrightable.  The idea for a game is not protected by copyright. The same is true of the name or title given to the game and of the method or methods for playing it....Copyright protection does not extend to any idea, system, method, device, or trademark material involved in the development, merchandising, or playing of a game.  See http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html

Issues over copyright have come up in D&D over character generators...but making these computer programs is fair use.  Why?  Because the very game itself requires you to generate your own character!  Automating that process by a computer program is therefore fair use, so long as you don’t steal WoTC computer code. 

So what about The Player’s handbook?  Since it is a particular expression of game rules, the work itself is protected by copyright, but the rules themselves are not.  Even if there is only one reasonable way of describing a rule, even that particular expression cannot be restricted by copyright.

Posted 03/29/2009 at 02:26:51pm

All that judges have to do is make it clear to jurors not to read the newspaper or research the internet at home.  If the stakes are so high for a particular case, the jurors could be sequestored at a hotel without a tv/radio/cell phone/internet access.  I don't see this as such a big deal.  Trials were fine when jurors watched the TV news to see the case on TV...is the internet so different?  Not really.

Posted 02/19/2009 at 01:41:32pm

@skywyze:  I beg to differ.  Our constitution is what makes this country great.  And nowhere in our constitution does it establish capitalism as the way to run our country's commerce.  That being said, I think carefully and thoughtfully regulated market capitalism is the best way to increase everyone's happiness, by rewarding entrepreneurs and increasing the general prosperity of the entire country.  Capitalism fails when our society is brought down by market excesses, when rouge traders who lose billions of dollars making fake trades and trillions when financial institutions make silly bets on the market with exotic derivitives.  And on an everyday level, capitialism fails when false advertising, fraudulent huxters, price fixing, and monopolies control the market. 

Your Jr. HS economics analysis is deeply flawed.  The supply/demand curve for windows XP is difficult to identify and who knows what the exact slope is...but regardless, you forget to factor in monopoly power and unfair trade practices.

Free markets are based upon competition.  Microsoft has time and again relied on anti-competitive tactics to fix prices and establish a monopoly, such as forcing OEMs to agree to restrictive and anti-competitive licensing terms, installing Internet Explorer on all Vista and XP systems, and forcing OEMs not to sell PCs with XP installed.  Not to mention, if you advertise a downgrade from Vista to XP, and then pull a switchero and say "well, you know, that costs an extra $50", that's arguably a classic illegal bait and switch, not to mention deceptive advertising.

If you are curious, a copy of the complaint is here:  http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/techtracks/090211%20Doc%201,%20Complaint.pdf - the plaintiff and her attorneys are much more intelligent than you are giving them credit for.