It could be built into the Flash video player, theoretically.

This seems like an excellent use of torrent streaming. Even if the average feed was a few minutes behind it should be an improvement in data distribution.

San Diego
Lap of Lake Michigan
Italy
Seattle
Florida

Photography
Computers
Sports cars
Sporting events
Bicycling
Hiking

Standard work
Work for friends and family

Visited snowy mountains in the Cascade range - that count for "Winter"?

I believe Microsoft's stance on the topic is "So." It's not like the OEMs have anywhere else to go, with any significant product sales that compare to Windows based sales.

Except I don't see Google pawning off their service. They ARE the conglomo-corp. And historically their ads are not terribly invasive in their services, because the ads are so much better targeted at the users that they don't have to pepper the page with a dozen ads.

Google can really stick it (gymnastics term, weird of me) if they don't force the UI changes on the user. Develop new stuff, absolutely, don't force it.

I like electric vehicles a lot. I think they have a lot of potential. But this is just dumb.

He did say they were tasked with setting up a room full of computers, so I would imagine that these gentlemen are not constrained to any of the roles you mentioned. They are probably considered by their employer as "general IT specialists", which is often the case in smaller companies. Whether they agree with their assigned task or not is irrelevant - they were told to do it and failed where the newbie figured it out, regardless of time frame. Furthermore someone was tasked with purchasing the equipment and failed to determine if their antiquated OS choice would even operate to their requirements before spending "thousands of dollars" (which could be a mere handful of PCs, ha ha!).

So these people you know in the "information technology" category who are not interested in new technology, what are they interested in? Old information technology? Those people are called archaeologists.

Because you asked direct questions I will answer them, rather than providing a list of snarky remarks.

I work for what I believe is actually a fairly young company. The average age is probably 30, possibly slightly higher but I wouldn't expect it to be over 35.

We're a bunch of geeks - we LIVE for new technology. That's not to say we accept everything with open arms, there's plenty of bitching when something bucks the norm, but for the most part we like new stuff and we like integrating it into our clients' environments.

I believe most IT people are interested in fancy new technology, making it work, and integrating it with things they are already familiar with. However, there are people who are just in it for the money and probably don't have the interest in geeky exploration. They took required courses and fulfill a specific role. If you ask them to do something outside of that role they will become agitated quickly.

Move to the Pacific Northwest. That's what my wife and I did.

http://www.weather.com/weather/hourbyhour/graph/USOR0275

No concern of heat or dry or hurricane or earthquake or tornado ...

They're already out there, but you're probably not in the right country to get the really good ones.

http://www.hecklerspray.com/top-26-sexiest-tv-ads-for-men/200816793.php

You knowingly watched a movie with "Arnold Schwarzenegger in HERCULES, in New York". You have no one to blame for your two lost hours but yourself.

Actually, no. It seems my phone purges them frequently without my interaction. I've made a dozen or more in the past two weeks and there is only one currently available.

No shit dude. I have a fucking 32GB phone of which I'm using about 3GB. The thing I use more than anything is Google Maps. If it's downloaded something, why does it ever delete it? I can cache apparently unlimited 10 mile squares (100 square miles?), but I can't say "Just fucking download the entire state of Iowa" (because, really, who would want to?).

But I suppose they're getting there. Slowly.

I'm curious what these old peripherals are that you need old PCs to support.

A friend of mine claims his PC based firewall does something superior to my Linksys router with alternative firmware. Sure it's more powerful but it also uses more power, generates more heat, and takes up more space and time managing it. My router is small, silent, and I never have to touch it. It routes my packets and protects my network. And I don't see the point of having and old PC for web browsing if you have a better computer at your disposal. It's either the primary computer for some user in the house, provides a specific purpose that can not be provided by the primary computer of some user in the house, or it's trash.

Using a PC as a NAS is definitely preferable, in my opinion, to a consumer NAS. Those things are invariably featureless and fail if you look at them funny. But if there's less than a handful of PCs on the network you might as well just throw a huge f'ing hard drive in one of the workstations and share it to the network. That's all your "PC NAS" is anyway.

In my house:

Primary workstation shared by my wife and I, and an occasional overnight guest
Also serves as file server, print server, and gaming PC
Printer/Scanner attached by USB
Roughly 2TB of storage

TV PC for video playback and rare gaming sessions, attached to TV
Loads files from workstation

Old laptop on a custom shelf in front of the treadmill for video playback
Loads files from workstation

Router/Access point with DDWRT (need to look into other options, but it works so why bother)

We each have a smart phone that talks on our wireless network.

I have a work laptop that I bring home for gaming and general surfing (and occasional work, hate to admit).

What do you do on your home network that I can't do? Honestly - I want to know. I have three computers and a router for two people.