Don't worry. Six months from now they'll make a "premium" Roku subscription where, for the low low price of $49.95/month, your Roku will work exactly like it used to.

If the premise is that this device is supposed to REPLACE a phone, then the "screen" or projector should not be monochrome. So it has nothing to do with how many colors someone wants to use for reading text. It has more to do with whether you can surf the web with it and watch movies. Otherwise why would anyone ditch a phone? If the premise is that this is in addition to a phone, like a smart watch is, then monochrome is fine, but they shouldn't advertise it as a phone killer if so.

Looks like the projector is monochrome? Who wants a monochrome "screen" for anything these days? Along with the privacy weirdness of everyone hearing my calls or being able to command my device, pass.

Guess that means I won't be getting quite as many spam connection requests from Chinese manufacturers that have absolutely nothing to do with my profession. Not today, People's Republic of China.

... and here's why: if there were ever aliens discovered by the US government, Trump would not be able to shut up about it the first instant he needs something to distract from his tomfuckery. Given that he has never done that, aliens have never visited us yet.

I'm willing to bet that China is driving the price down so it can send out numerous trolls to buy it. Then they'll suddenly have a "revelation" about how good Bitcoin is, which will drive the price up..... they'll sell. Then they will crack down again. Rinse repeat. It's China.

http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi...

I definitely don't think this is going to matter one way or another. I actually have a fair bit of experience doing business in India, and it amounts to this: whatever someone will pay you in the US or EU, take a tenth of that and that's the MOST you will get from Indian users. I used to sell medical device coatings that would cost $20-$75/per coating per device. That's more than most people in India pay for the WHOLE device in most cases, depending. I sell courses online for $200/pc on my personal site. Indians offer about $20 for them, and still ask for discounts. I teach courses for a company that charges roughly $3,000 per person to have me teach them for three days, and we never go to India because there's no one in the whole country that would pay that. They keep trying to get us to go there for like 20 bucks a person. Not gonna happen. The reason for this is money is on a completely different scale there. A white collar professional makes about $600 to $1,000/month. That's considered good money. I tried to break a 1000 rupee note at a hotel concierge once (roughly equivalent to a 20-dollar bill), and they didn't have enough money in their entire cash register to do it. You can't make real money in India. If you do anything there at all, you do it because you want to help.

Get your popcorn, folks. This is going to be a sh*tshow of epic proportions.

I'm glad for the experiment. However, I cannot see how Universal Basic Income would not simply lower the nominal value of money. Once everyone has X, that X is no longer worth anything. If you get $2,000 per month for nothing, and you rent an apartment from me, guess how much I'm going to charge you for it? More than $2,000.

Ugh... my face is pink from all the facepalms in that paragraph.

....another walled garden set-top box derivative that won't interact with anything else except hardware from the same OEM. Pass.

Either way, we're all going to learn something from whatever happens here. :)

Can these enhancements enable the rat to learn the art of Ninjutsu?

Pieces of this exist already, and have for years. The "create your own server" model works great in NWN, but that game is ancient now, and few others have been able to mimic its versatility. Some have tried. The "make and sell your own objects" is pretty vibrant on FPS games like Team Fortress 2 and in sandbox games like Second Life, obviously. As you said, the execution is what matters.

However, when it comes to execution, I don't even think the game needs to be the latest and greatest as far as graphics go. An indie studio will never match the multi-tens of millions spent by studios on graphical assets, voiceovers, etc. By contrast, people still play MUD's even today, and those are just text. Why? Because some of them are executed well. I don't think good execution relies too heavily on eye-popping graphics. As long as the UI is good, the toolset is good, and the EULA is workable, it will be great.

Bioware's NWN really shot itself in the foot with its EULA which forbade making money from a player-made server, btw.