Trust, especially when it comes to reviews and editorials, has to be earned on an individual basis. As someone who has enjoyed visiting and reading boingboing for the past several years, Mark et al. have earned my trust by being honest, earnest, and passionate. IF at some point in the future, a major conflict of interest emerges, ala the GameSpot debacle, that trust will be lost, and I will find other ways to waste time.

In the meantime, if folks here are super upset about the corporate sponsorships, maybe we can organize a "Community Sponsored" tag, for posts that receive the most "Favorite This!" votes? I don't have enough money to pay for ads on the site, but I'd chip in a few bucks for particularly awesome posts. YTMND does this, for example.

GameSpot ref:
(http://www.joystiq.com/2007/12/03/exclusive-gertsmann-speaks-about-kandl-review-future/)

I've been using a Max-based sequencer called Cbasicore64 for over a year now, and it's great. It's a fairly good SID chip emulator, it's standalone, and it has ReWire support. It's also available for both Mac and Windows.

You can get it from the developers' site here (after scrolling down for a bit):
http://mils.mils.free.fr/pagesoft.html