Some changes have been announced for the Mass Effect and Spore. Still has some DRM, but it's not as crazy as it was before.

Kotaku posted an article about it earlier: http://kotaku.com/5008452/bioware-backs-down-from-draconian-mass-effect-authentication

Ok, this was lame. There's something to be said for getting familiar with the keyboard before you start running timed tests on it. Seriously, those numbers would have been a lot closer together if people had looked to find the punctuation beforehand. How much time was lost to "Where's the apostrophe?"

At any rate, I'd really like to get a good state-of-the-union on the ultra-portables.

The 8.9"-screen Eee should be out in a couple weeks, and I'm really considering buying one. I can live with the small keys. It's not like I'm going to be writing my great american novel on it.

@Nehpetse

When you are looking at thumbnails in Vista (and other versions of windows), the images that you're looking at aren't the actual image files. They're actually saved in a file called thumbs.db.

If you go into the folder options, and set it to show hidden files, you'll see it.

Then when you update the image, thumbs.db gets updated. It's a lot faster than having vista open every file and create a thumbnail each time you open the folder.

The giraffe's from a 2005 Fark.com photoshop contest.

You'll find it in this thread: http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=1837095

(Yay, Grabthar.)

If you really want one, ebay is your friend.

Click here to view the rediculously long ebay link

This one's actually a higher res camera than the one you linked to.

Note that a) this isn't my auction and b) the seller is in Hong Kong. So buyer beware. (And the guy selling this item is going to wonder where all this random traffic showed up from.)

It's $10 + $15 S&H.

If you search for "webcam LED", you'll come up with something. Looks like there are a bunch of colors available (most of them hideous), but they all look like painted plastic.

So... what do I put into adblock to kill off beacon?

I think the two 'real questions' are:

1. Will the EV-DO service cost extra?

2. How is the (inevitable) DRM scheme going to screw us?

I knew I saw a better article earlier. Here it is:

http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2007/11/10/microsoft-shipping-non-functional-zune-2-devices/

Rumor has it that none of the zune 2 players will work until tomorrow 11/13.

They were shipped with a non-functional firmware. So the first thing that you're going to have to do when it's officially released is to install the new firmware.

This article mentions the locked business, but doesn't have good details. It's a start. http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/10/zune-round-up-unboxing-gallery-leaked-units-locked-till-launc/