This is something I thought about when I took out a term life insurance policy. My biggest fear is that near the end of that term (20 years), some problem will be discovered that indicates I may have only a few years left to live. I'll have to decide if I kill myself so that my family gets the life insurance payout or let nature take its course.

If I choose the latter option, I'm terrified that my death will be slow and incredibly expensive consuming everything I've saved. I'm going to die no matter what and if I can help it, I won't leave my wife and kids with nothing.

How would a quantum computer change the equations?

The best PDF software I've ever used is Prince XML.

For years, we got by with HTMLDoc but finally dumped it because we absolutely needed unicode support.

After trying many different packages, we settled on Prince. Our main constraints were performance related which you apparently aren't worried about, so maybe it's overkill for what you need.

What's the difference between the crappy Motorola DVR which records the cable stream (and these days it's all a digital stream) and a Roku box? Why can the Motorola box record and the Roku cannot? It's not like the Roku box is anti-DRM or anything.

I suspect it will never happen since this is Hollywood's greatest enemy

What do you mean? It's already happened. I have a (crappy) DVR from AT&T that does it. Before that we had a Directv DVR and before that I had a Tivo.

I also have a 55" Samsung TV (it's a great screen) and the smart tv features are painfully slow compared to the Roku.

Even if I didn't buy the Roku at the same time as my TV, I suspect I would buy one eventually. Even if you are happy with the smart features today, you always have the option of upgrading the smart features via an external box.

I think you are going to need something like Plex to stream local content.

I haven't seen a smart tv where the smart features are any good.

I have a Roku 3 and it works great. Technology moves quickly though and when the Roku 4 comes out, I'd rather upgrade my $100 Roku box than my $1000 television.

I will likely buy a Fire TV. We have a two television sets and because of the way one is mounted on the wall, it's a pain to connect and disconnect the Roku. So for me, it makes sense to have a second streaming device and for $100, this one seems like a pretty good deal.

That said, I wish they would incorporate some DVR capabilities. On the Roku, I can get streaming versions of all my local TV stations. It would be nice if it could tell it to record shows from the streams.

I don't have a problem with ebooks being more expensive. For me, they are much more useful and thus more valuable. I'm willing to pay more for an electronic copy and so are a lot of people. In the end, that's what determines the price. The cost of the raw materials only establishes a floor beyond which the publishers will lose money. It has very little to do with the fair price.

Every time I go into a Barnes and Noble store, it kills me that I can't buy ebooks for my Kindle there. The ideal bookstore for me would be one that I can browse the inventory, read part of the book, then take the book or a card to a register where they will send an ebook to my device or put it on a memory stick. Right now, I go into the store, find stuff I'm interested in, then buy it from Amazon. There's basically no way for me to support my local book stores because they don't sell anything I want.

Talk about setting the bar low? They believe the second generation will be more successful? It couldn't be less successful, could it?

Pretending that Android is not Linux is intellectually dishonest.

Is there any reason why Android couldn't be built on top of a different operating system? Does the fact that it's sitting on top of Linux matter?

The point is that the government attorney was seeking 35 years. That's not a reasonable punishment for the government to seek. Now more information about Carmen Ortiz is surfacing and it's just getting worse and worse for the government.

How many immediate family members do not recognize a suicidal condition in someone? But we expect a lawyer to see it?

First, lots of people knew about Swartz' depression, especially his family. Secondly, the US attorney's office is being criticized for not seeking justice, but for seeking unusually harsh punishment. Swartz was afraid of being sentenced to 30 years in prison. You don't think 30 years is excessive?

Like John Lennon once said, time you enjoy wasting isn't wasted.

I was responding to the claim that Metro apps are designed to be used on desktops with mouse & keyboard *and* touch devices by pointing out big problems with Metro on the desktop.