@Wabbited: Erm... I'm sure Wabbited meant something else; but providing anything other than plus, minus or equal to 120VAC will cause issues with and permanent damage to the components inside a PC. Long story short, don't undervolt a PC. Ever. ~120VAC (or whatever its original locale dictates) or bust.

ClearQAM scrambling is what's going to make me kick the habit. When I can no longer use my media center with the cable company; its out the window. Thankfully, Charter in my area is only scrambling G4 (now-otherwise-known-as-Ninja-Warrior-TV).

@Polterg3ist won't be pleased: *oooh, we're releasing C&C2k11 next week. We'll be shutting down the auth servers for C&C2k10 now. kthxbai*

@dowingba: The Steam version does have this DRM. In fact, its a bit worse... you have to be on Steam, registered with EA, have their crapware installed, be logged into EA and make sure you *stay* logged in while playing. Blugh.

@Tacticalspoon: Meh. Random achievements that are only shared with users of EA games (and probably only other C&C4 players) seem kind of moot. The nifty thing about Xbox 360 achievements (and to a lesser extent Steam and the PS3) is that you can share and compare with tons of your friends across bunches of games in…

@Angus Burger: True that. At least we have piracy around to preserve our digital art for posterity so that there isn't a giant blackhole in the history of popular art/entertainment.

@pigsdofly: ... I assume that this is sarcastic... making a transmission protocol illegal is quite draconian. Its like saying, "well, only criminals talk to each other using secret languages... so we should make talking in languages we don't understand illegal".

I had my credit card out, ready to buy this off of Steam. Its a shame too. Requires Steam ID (of course), but also an EA ID and persistent Internet connectivity. I live in an area serviced exclusively by Charter - there's no such thing as persistent Internet connectivity out here. I also don't feel like installing…

@Eric Deadpool Boatman: In the past three years of buying from Steam, they haven't once fucked me over in the name of 'anti-piracy'. PC Games bought from the store, however, have screwed me at every turn.

Odd. People who paid $60 for the game are now fucked out of playing it (and realize that a couple years from now they won't be able to)... and people who downloaded it for free are totally clear. Hmm... they wonder why piracy is so rampant. My last PC purchase was Overlord, after which I got amazingly pissed b/c…

It's nice to see all the responses about RAID not being a backup solution. Faith in humanity sort-of restored.

Transmission is freaking awesome. Mountainbiker; It's all about the interface IMHO. It has every feature of uTorrent (which is a wonderfully kick-ass and featureful client itself) in an incredibly tight package that melds wonderfully with OSX.

Blegh. Quicktime.

@sadenshi: Basic or not basic won't help you any. Jammie Thomas was fined $222,000 dollars for what amounts to a CD's worth of music. Even with the most basic of broad-band services, that can be had in a few hours downloading time. That certainly won't stop your kids from downloading their favorite music.

Personally this sort of thing has always scared me about the realities of computing in America today. The main issue wrt the RIAA is that they have unlimited legal funding when compared to whatever you can come up with. No matter what you do to attempt to protect yourself legally, you'll still have to bring it to…

I actually found flexible electrical tubing from auto stores to be most useful here. It's clean, compact , long lasting and already has a nice split down the side.

The whole things feels like a hoax, but parts of its seem very convincing. All of the sites seem to use decent style copyright-oriented feeds... but the main "design firm" that seems behind is it webstyler.com. If you happen to go to their site, you'll see why I use the term "design firm" with quotes. I'm also…

Meh. They sound interesting, but I can certainly forsee my stuff clambering to get to the floor. On the other hand, the linked site is freaking awesome. Instant RSS subscription!

Jayg25, ouch. In the complex ecosystem that is applications development - it frequently ISN'T the fault of applications programmers. You're likely someone who blames IT when the power goes out, so I won't waste much effort explaining to you how one change up the stream can mess everything up down the stream. I…

@Will: Good point there about the BTUs. Of course, then when Winter comes around the added BTUs could be seen as a benefit. :)