I stumbled into a news item today about the Kyoto treaty and how various US States and cities were taking it upon themselves to put their own local emisions caps in. I think this is a good thing and it moves the decision making back where it belongs, at the local level. It’s an essential part of Federalism (which is basically a lite-version of a Confederation. A few basic rules are applied across all of the states including allowing free movement between states for the citizens of the federal entity.

Part 1. UK.Modding an Xbox gets you arrested On the flipside though, It seems that it may not have been the modding that got him in trouble, but the selling of the 80 pirated games on each xbox unit. I guess this one’s a tossup without more information.Edit: On further reading in the 3rd paragraph down in this link (that no longer exists) it appears that it was the mod chipping itself, not the piracy, that got him arrested.

I grabbed a copy of Breath of Fire 3 the other day. It is a PS1 game that I played long ago but didn’t get very far with. All I remembered was that it was a lot of fun, and that I always felt constrained and claustrophobic in it. It always kind of restricted you to a tiny area of the map. I still haven’t gotten as far as I was last time yet.

Why yes, it can be says this nifty article from mindjack. It reiterates the same things that people like Eric Flint have been saying all along. Digital piracy promotes word of mouth and eventually makes the product even more successful than it would have been otherwise. He uses Battlestar Galactica and Dr. Who as his examples. He also throws together an different way of advertising that would allow pirated (or freely released on the i-net) shows to still have advertising and still make the producers money.

(Link for this article no longer valid) You know though, China may have had nothing to do with this. At least as far as the words “freedom” and “independence” are concerned. I would think that those two words would run contrary to their “Windows Everywhere” project and they would be willing to ban them even if they weren’t doing it for China.

Next generation consoles and how to misuse statistics. Microsoft recently released a document to various gaming organizations. Only one site I know of published it with a huge warning up front that it was direct from microsoft with no editing whatsoever and was extremely slanted. Further research shows that its slant approaches vertical. Since then I’ve noticed on many gaming sites that Microsoft fanboys have been abusing these numbers that they apparently don’t even understand and using them to tout the superiority of their choice of two systems that aren’t even OUT yet.

The games are getting slaughtered here. A week or two ago I finished off Okage. This weekend I polished off Front Mission 4, and last night I gave Dark Cloud 1 another go right before bed and finished it as well. FM4 I just purchased while Dark Cloud I’ve had for a bit over a year. Technically they’re not DONE done. FM4 still has the extra mode where you go through again starting with 800 some experience points and a good bit of extra cash.

Edit: Replaced a subscription link with a free one of the same story. Take that, registration required sites!Amd says Intel’s dual core isn’t really a dual coreAccording to what I’ve read on various hardware sites, they’re right… at least about the dual core Xeons. Intel’s Dual core Xeon chips are really just 2 Xeon dies stuck next to each other inside the same chip packaging, only connected through their frontside bus.

I posted before about unfinished games and the like. Here’s an update, not that anyone actually cares. :) I’ve finished Okage. I’ve gotten to where I consider FF11’s main storyline finished. I’ve given up on Pokemon and Metroid Fusion. I think I’m going to trade them in for credit.FFXI: RDM64 BLM32 BST31. Kazriri is up to WHM20 and BLM12. That’s about all the progress I’ve made past finishing mission 5-2.I’ve tossed Front Mission 4 and Arc the Lad 4 onto my stack of unfinished games.

Wil Wheaton recently posted a link to something called the huffington post. It appears to be a very left wing production with some rather high profile Democrats writing it. There were a couple of interesting posts like this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/irshad-manji/the-riots-in-jalalabad_1013.html and this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/theblog/archive/seth-greenland/paxilistan_1055.html which are both a little out in center-left field, but in general it’s just way out in left field.This one especially left me agog. I mean. I stared at the final sentence for awhile thinking “who would actually suggest this!