Leo Atrox' Space - Gaming, Technology, Guns, and Whatever-I-Say Talk

• LittleBigPlanet will be available October 2008.
• Resistance 2 shown. Graphically impressive.
• Resistance for PSP announced.
• PSN Video Store available today. Priced very competitively against the XBL Video Marketplace, and they touted its organization over the same.
• DC Universe Online shown for the first time; being developed by Sony Online Entertainment (their first PS3 game).
• God of War III officially announced and shown.
• Ratchet and Clank games for PS3 (download?) and PSP, and the PSP SOCOM shown.
• Ghostbusters and Infamous shown. Infamous scheduled for Spring 2009.
• MAG (Massive Action Game) shown off. Will be like SOCOM but have 8-person squads and 256-person battles. Great concept, but how will the execution be?
• Added functionality coming for the 80GB PlayStation 3, and a price point of $399 as well (same as the new 60GB Xbox 360 with one year of Xbox Live).
• More of Home shown.
• An orginal TV show for PSN shown from Polyphony Digital (makers of Gran Turismo) and GTTV, which will be a PPV affair for car-lovers.

Dear Xbox LIVE Member,

When we launched Xbox 360 in November 2005, Xbox LIVE was integrated directly into the console. Back then, Xbox 360 was the first system to deliver access to experiences beyond just the disc in the tray. With the Xbox guide and dashboard you had access to everything on your console as well as your community.

We also imagined that Xbox experience would continuously improve over time, through the power of software.

Since launch, you’ve always pushed us to continuously innovate. It is because you spoke with one loud voice that we added new features like background downloading, 1080p support, movies and TV shows, video chat, a Marketplace blade and instant messaging.

Over time, as we’ve delivered more and more content into the Xbox LIVE Marketplace, we’ve heard from many of you that it has become increasingly difficult to find the games and content you want.

And that brings us to today.

Because of your feedback, we started rethinking the entire Xbox experience. What we discovered was that we could not only provide a better experience for you, but also something that reaches out to new audiences.

What John Schappert unveiled for the world on stage at E3 was just a sneak preview, so I wanted to share some deeper details on some of the new features in the new Xbox experience.

Here is a look at some additional features you will find interesting:

· Play from hard drive. Copy your games from the game disc and play directly from the hard drive.  Not only will the drive not spin, but load times are quicker, as well. Of course, you will still need the disc in the tray to prove you own the game.

· Access Xbox LIVE Marketplace on the Web.  Browse and purchase Marketplace content whenever you want from Xbox.com and it downloads automatically to your console.  Purchase that new map, television episode, the latest Xbox LIVE Arcade game or set up a movie to watch when you get home from work.

· Dashboard built into the new Xbox Guide.  For everyone who loves the blades interface, it’s not going away; they are now built directly in to the new Xbox guide. Every feature and option is available right from the guide.  You can even access your full games library at all times.  No matter where you are (in dash or in game), immediately call up your games played list and directly launch a game.   

· LIVE Party system.  Create a party of up to eight friends, and stay with them from one game to another, or watch a Netflix movie together, or share a slideshow of your personal photos.  It works with all Xbox 360 titles, not just upcoming games.  LIVE Party allows up to eight people to chat in the dashboard, so you can meet up before playing. 

· Xbox LIVE Primetime. This whole new category of games is going to give you more reasons to get online with your friends.  Games will support everything you’d expect, like Achievements and leader boards, but many of these games will include real prizes. You can invite your friends, and even set a reminder for an upcoming show.  Each game is broadcast simultaneously, so everyone is answering the same questions.  Many events will have a live host, calling the shots as they happen. 

· Avatars. Your online identity started as a Gamertag - it then grew into a personalized Gamercard. Now, it has evolved even further into avatars.  You can express your style, check out new outfits and share this with the community.  Avatars will also be integrated into Xbox LIVE Arcade games, LIVE Party, as well as retail games. 

· New display support. Because you asked for it, we are adding 16X10 over VGA or HDMI, and support for 1440x900 or 1680x1050.

This is only the beginning.  Over the next few months, we will share more details on the upcoming changes. 

See you online,

Marc Whitten

Gamertag- Notwen

Oh yeah ... And there were a few game announcements like:

• Fallout 3 DLC exclusive to Xbox 360
• Rock Band 2 is a timed-exclusive for Xbox 360
• Portal DLC "Portal: Still Alive" exclusive to Xbox 360
• Lips karaoke game (Xbox 306 exclusive) will allow players to sing to their own tunes
• Square/Enix'  Final Fantasy XIII will be released on Xbox 360 in the US and Europe at the same time as the PS3 version!

Source: http://majornelson.com/archive/2008/07/14/some-of-the-features-in-the-new-xbox-experience-8-person-chat-vga-plus-more.aspx

After bricking a plethora of PS3's with firmware 2.40, Sony is giving it another shot. Firmware 2.41 has the same features, but won't brick PS3's ... At least, that's the hope. Folks who installed 2.40 and had their PS3's bricked will need to send it off to Sony for a replacement.

Source: http://www.ps3fanboy.com/2008/07/08/ps3-firmware-2-41-now-available/

Sources: http://www.joystiq.com/2008/07/02/ps3-firmware-2-40-is-now-live/
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2008/06/30/firmware-v240-faq/

Heller quotes from the majority

Thursday, June 26th, 2008 10:27 am | Tom Goldstein

 

“Logic demands that there be a link between the stated purpose and the command.” (4)

“But apart from that clarifying function, a prefatory clause does not limit or expand the scope of the operative clause.” (4)

“But where the text of a clause itself indicates that it does not have operative effect . . . a court has no license to make it do what it was not designed to do.” (4)

“Nowhere else in the Constitution does a ‘right’ attributed to ‘the people’ refer to anything other than an individual right.” (6)

“‘[T]he people,’ refers to all members of the political community, not an unspecified subset.” (6)

“We start therefore with a strong presumption that the Second Amendment right is exercised individually and belongs to all Americans.” (7)

“[T]he most natural reading of ‘keep Arms’ in the Second Amendment is to ‘have weapons.’” (8)

“The term was applied, then as now, to weapons that were not specifically designed for military use and were not employed in a military capacity.” (8)

“[T]here are a few examples, all of which favor viewing the right to ‘keep Arms’ as an individual right unconnected with militia service…’Keep arms’ was simply a common way of referring to possessing arms, for militiamen and everyone else.” (9) (emphasis in original)

“At the time of the founding, as now, to ‘bear’ meant to ‘carry.’. . . When used with ‘arms,’ however, the term has a meaning that refers to carrying for a particular purpose - confrontation.” (10)

“Although the phrase implies that the carrying of the weapon is for the purpose of ‘offensive or defensive action,’ it in no way connotes participation in a structured military organization. (11)

“Worse still, the phrase ‘keep and bear Arms’ would be incoherent. The word ‘Arms’ would have two different meanings at once: ‘weapons’ (as the object of ‘keep’) and (as the object of ‘bear’) one-half of an idiom. It would be rather like saying ‘He filled and kicked the bucket’ to mean ‘He filled the bucket and died.’ Grotesque.” (13)

“[I]f ‘bear arms’ means, as the petitioners and the dissent think, the carrying of arms only for military purposes, one simply cannot add ‘for the purpose of killing game.’ The right ‘to carry arms in the militia for the purpose of killing game’ is worthy of the mad hatter. (15)

“Putting all of these textual elements together, we find that they guarantee the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.” (19)

“Thus, we do not read the Second Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read the First Amendment to protect the right of citizens to speak for any purpose.” (22) (italics in original)

“There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history, that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms. Of course the right was not unlimited, just as the First Amendment’s right of free speech was not[.]” (22)

“It is true that the term ‘State’ elsewhere in the Constitution refers to individual States, but the phrase ‘security of a free state’ and close variations seem to have been terms of art in 18th-century political discourse, meaning a ‘free country’ or free polity.” (24)

“That history showed that the way tyrants had eliminated a militia consisting of all the able-bodied men was not by banning the militia but simply by taking away the people’s arms, enabling a select militia or standing army to suppress political opponents . . . During the 1788 ratification debates, the fear that the federal government would disarm the people in order to impose rule through a standing army or select militia was pervasive in Anti-federalist rhetoric.” (25)

“The prefatory clause does not suggest that preserving the militia was the only reason Americans valued the ancient right; most undoubtedly thought it even more important for self-defense and hunting.” (26)

“Our interpretation is confirmed by analogous arms bearing rights in state constitutions that preceded and immediately followed adoption of the Second Amendment.” (27)

“It is dubious to rely on [the drafting] history to interpret a text that was widely understood to codify a pre-existing right, rather than to fashion a new one.” (30)

“‘Legislative history,’ of course, refers to the pre-enactment statements of those who drafted or voted for a law; it is considered persuasive by some, not because they reflect the general understanding of the disputed terms, but because the legislators who heard or read those statements presumably voted with that understanding. ‘Postenactment legislative history,” a deprecatory contradiction in terms, refers to statements of those who drafted or voted for the law that are made after its enactment and hence could have had no effect on the congressional vote.” (32)

“As we will show, virtually all interpreters of the Second Amendment in the century after its enactment interpreted the amendment as we do.” (32)

“We have found only one early 19th-century commentator who clearly conditioned the right to keep and bear arms upon service in the militia - and he recognized that the prevailing view was to the contrary.” (37)

“The 19th-century cases that interpreted the Second Amendment universally support an individual right unconnected to militia service.” (37)

“Blacks were routinely disarmed by Southern States after the Civil War. Those who opposed these injustices frequently stated that they infringed blacks’ constitutional right to keep and bear arms. Needless to say, the claim was not that blacks were being prohibited from carrying arms in an organized state militia.” (42)

“Every late-19th-century legal scholar that we have read interpreted the Second Amendment to secure an individual right unconnected with militia service.” (44)

“It was plainly the understanding in the post-Civil War Congress that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to use arms for self-defense.” (44)

On the question of the Second Amendment’s application to the States: “With respect to Cruikshank’s continuing validity on incorporation, a question not presented by this case, we note that Cruikshank also said that the First Amendment did not apply against the States and did not engage in the sort of Fourteenth Amendment inquiry required by our later cases. Our later decisions in Presser v. Illinois, 116 U. S. 252, 265 (1886) and Miller v. Texas, 153 U. S. 535, 538 (1894), reaffirmed that the Second Amendment applies only to the Federal Government.” (48, footnote 23)

“And what is, according to JUSTICE STEVENS, the holding of Miller that demands such obeisance? That the Second Amendment ‘protects the right to keep and bear arms for certain military purposes, but that it does not curtail the legislature’s power to regulate the nonmilitary use and ownership of weapons.” Nothing so clearly demonstrates the weakness of JUSTICE STEVENS’ case. Miller did not hold that and cannot possibly be read to have held that.” (49)

“Miller stands only for the proposition that the Second Amendment right, whatever its nature, extends only to certain types of weapons.” (50)

“Read in isolation, Miller’s phrase ‘part of ordinary military equipment’ could mean that only those weapons useful in warfare are protected. That would be a startling reading of the opinion, since it would mean that the National Firearms Act’s restrictions on machineguns (not challenged in Miller) might be unconstitutional, machineguns being useful in warfare in 1939.” (52)

“We therefore read Miller to say only that the Second Amendment does not protect those weapons not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes, such as short-barreled shotguns.” (53)

“It should be unsurprising that such a significant matter has been for so long judicially unresolved. For most of our history, the Bill of Rights was not thought applicable to the States, and the Federal Government did not significantly regulate the possession of firearms by law-abiding citizens. Other provisions of the Bill of Rights have similarly remained unilluminated for lengthy periods.This Court first held a law to violate the First Amendment’s guarantee of freedom of speech in 1931, almost 150 years after the Amendment was ratified, see Near v. Minnesota ex rel. Olson, 283 U. S. 697 (1931), and it was not until after World War II that we held a law invalid under the Establishment Clause, see Illinois ex rel. McCollum v. Board of Ed. of School Dist. No. 71, ChampaignCty., 333 U. S. 203 (1948).” (53-54)

“Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” (54)

“We also recognize another important limitation on the right to keep and carry arms. Miller said, as we have explained, that the sorts of weapons protected were those ‘in common use at the time.’ 307 U. S., at 179. We think that limitation is fairly supported by the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of “dangerous and unusual weapons.” (55)

“It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service - M-16 rifles and the like - may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty.” (55)

“The handgun ban amounts to a prohibition of an entire class of ‘arms’ that is overwhelmingly chosen by American society for that lawful purpose. The prohibition extends, moreover, to the home, where the need for defense of self, family, and property is most acute. Under any of the standards of scrutiny that we have applied to enumerated constitutional rights, banning from the home ‘the most preferred firearm in the nation to ‘keep’ and use for protection of one’s home and family,’ would fail constitutional muster.” (56-57)

“It is no answer to say, as petitioners do, that it is permissible to ban the possession of handguns so long as the possession of other firearms (i.e., long guns) is allowed. It is enough to note, as we have observed, that the American people have considered the handgun to be the quintessential self-defense weapon.” (57)

“Whatever the reason, handguns are the most popular weapon chosen by Americans for self-defense in the home, and a complete prohibition of their use is invalid.” (57-58)

“The District argues that we should interpret this element of the statute to contain an exception for self-defense. But we think that is precluded by the unequivocal text, and by the presence of certain other enumerated exceptions.” (58)

“Respondent conceded at oral argument that he does not ‘have a problem with . . . licensing’ and that the District’s law is permissible so long as it is ‘not enforced in an arbitrary and capricious manner.’ We therefore assume that petitioners’ issuance of a license will satisfy respondent’s prayer for relief and do not address the licensing requirement.” (59)

“We know of no other enumerated constitutional right whose core protection has been subjected to a freestanding ‘interest-balancing’ approach. The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government - even the Third Branch of Government - the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all. Constitutional rights are enshrined with the scope they were understood to have when the people adopted them, whether or not future legislatures or (yes) even future judges think that scope too broad. We would not apply an “interest-balancing” approach to the prohibition of a peaceful neo-Nazi march through Skokie. See National Socialist Party of America v. Skokie, 432 U. S. 43 (1977) (per curiam). The First Amendment contains the freedom-of-speech guarantee that the people ratified, which included exceptions for obscenity, libel, and disclosure of state secrets, but not for the expression of extremely unpopular and wrong-headed views. The Second Amendment is no different. Like the First, it is the very product of an interest-balancing by the people-which JUSTICE BREYER would now conduct for them anew. And whatever else it leaves to future evaluation, it surely elevates above all other interests the right of law-abiding, responsible citizens to use arms in defense of hearth and home.” (62-63)

“In sum, we hold that the District’s ban on handgun possession in the home violates the Second Amendment, as does its prohibition against rendering any lawful firearm in the home operable for the purpose of immediate self-defense. Assuming that Heller is not disqualified from the exercise of Second Amendment rights, the District must permit him to register his handgun and must issue him a license to carry it in the home.” (64)

“Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our Nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security, and where gun violence is a serious problem. That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this Court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct.” (64)

Even before the suit was filed challenging the Chicago Weapons Ordinance, city officials said they believed the Chicago law did not fall under the Supreme Court ruling.

"We are confident that this does not invalidate Chicago's ordinance at this point," said Jennifer Hoyle, spokeswoman for the city Law Department.

Benna Solomon, deputy corporation counsel for the city, asserted that the Supreme Court decision applies only to the federal government. Washington D.C., she said, is part of the federal government, but Chicago is an independent home-rule unit of Illinois.

"The court notes that it is not required to consider whether the 2nd Amendment also applies to state and local government, and therefore it does not consider that question," Solomon said. "The court had previously held on three occasions the 2nd Amendment does not apply to state and local government, and it does not reconsider or even address that issue in this opinion."

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.