So it looks like Sony is going to enter the handheld gaming market sometime in 2004. I am not really surprised by this. Right now, the space is dominated by Nintendo, and while I love my Gameboy Advance, more competition is needed in this area.

The Sony handheld will be called the PSP, will have 3D capabilities, USB 2.0, and it will have a custom processor. It will have a disc called a UMD that will be half the size of a DVD and will hold 1.8GB of data.

You can read the article on it here. There is also a little info on the newest version of the PS2 that will be released in the U.S. in June. It will have the network adapter included, and will feature a quieter fan and support for re-writable DVD's.

My take on this is that this device is, while cool, will probably not be able to remove Nintendo from their coveted place in the handheld market. The handheld marketplace is littered with companies that tried to knock them down, and failed. Sega, Atari, and SNK, to name a few.

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Today, while browsing the SomethingAwful forums, I found a thread filled with some pictures taken at a Pro War rally in Washington D.C. There were some real gems, but unfortunately, I can't link the pictures here.

My favorite had to be of someone holding up a sign that said" Except for Slavery, Marxism, Communism & Fascism, war has never solved anything". Let's analyze that for a moment.

Yes, war ended slavery, but from reading history books, I would not be surprised if much of the South was going to be abandoning slavery.

Marxism and Communism. We fought Communists in Korea. Well, the North and South are still technically at war, and anyone that reads the news knows how things are going over there right now. Vietnam, we pulled out of that and the South fell to the North. Vietnam is currently a Communist country. Castro is still in power in Cuba, which shows that sanctions really do a whole lot of nothing. The Soviet Union collapsed on its own weight. The Chinese are currently looking more and more capitolist than ever. So no, war didn't do a damn bit of good against the communist "threat".

Fascism. Yes, we fought and beat Hitler and Mussolini in World War 2. As I recall, we had the help of the Communists in that one. Josef Stalin was once an ally.

Other signs had such wonderful slogans like "Thank God for George W. Bush", "FOX Cable News - The Truth and Nothing But". "Let's Roll", GOP - God's Official Party", and of course the usual support the troops and Bush bullshit.

I would love nothing more than to take all these people, arm them with knives and put them on an island with the extreme Anti War protesters, you know, the ones that block traffic in downtown Portland, and let them fight to the death. Things would be a lot more peaceful around here.