Yes, I agree that unlike Bluray the lowly DVD still has a price advantage compared to thumb drives, but I would not call a 25 cents DVD archival material. And when you are talking about larger sized backups usb hard drives start to become a better alternative, since a decent quality DVD comes to about the same price per GB, and hard drives have both the advantage of speed and convenience on their side.

In what way are the thumb drives not universal? They are supported on pretty much every device with a standard USB port and work with no extra steps on all major operating systems. Most computers (if not all) made in the last 6 years or so can boot from them. That's as good as universal in my book, certainly more than needing a separate reading device in all computers.

Also the quality of optical device readers has taken a very sharp turn for the worse since they have got to commodities level. I have encountered many cases where a DVD unit would not read rewritables, or even read CDs but refuse to read DVDs, and the culprit was not wear and tear. In fact, I own a DVD reader that has not been used 100 times in its lifetime that has become unable to read rewritable DVDs. Optical drives on laptops are even poorer quality. So, having optical media and the corresponding unit in a device is no longer a guarantee that you will be able to use said media. In those cases, ironically, it's usually the USB thumb drive that saves the day.

At this point in time a 25 GB rewritable Bluray disc is about 15$. A 32GB SanDisk Cruzer is 17$. A thumbnail sized 32GB SanDisk Cruzer Fit CZ33 is 21$. Out of those, I think the thumb drives are a much better value for money, even ignoring the fact that most computers would be unable to use the Bluray disc.

Hey, the K7S5A from ECS was a great board!

Bandwidth and data caps, probably.

I also live in a metric country and there is no such thing as "a beer". The seller is obligated to specify the exact size of the container. So, even if I order "a glass of wine", the menu or the displayed price list specifies that said glass is 100 ml or whatever. Usually, strong spirits are sold in 50 ml or 100 ml doses, wine in about 250 ml, and beer in 500ml, 750 ml or 1l (a glass, big glass or extra big glass). There's also a "billy goat" beer glass that is 300ml, but that is pretty rare.

Also, similar to Germany, the supermarkets display on the price tag, below the unit price, the price/kg or price/l, so comparison shopping is easy. It's probably a european directive at work.

You seem to act as if the metric countries don't have any builders. Guess what, they do, so your argument that metric is hard is pretty damn weak, too.

In fact, I think your argument boils down to "American builders are stupider than those in the rest of the world". They are not. If the rest of the world can use metric, I guarantee they they can too.

Many people prefer the Xbox controller design. I have both consoles, and the PS3 controller cramps up my hands something fierce and that's a pity, because overall I refer the PS3 just because it's quieter and most multiplatform games are pretty much on par these days across the two. I still haven't found a third party Xbox style controller for the PS3 that wasn't crap (I'm waiting for a Gioteck HF-2 at the moment, I'll see how it goes).

The PS3 controller uses Bluetooth, so I guess it will be possible to pair it with the Ouya for those that prefer it. In fact it's very likely, and if not there will surely be a third party app for this if if it won't work out of the box. But for me the fact that the Ouya has a Xbox style controller is actually a plus, shame that they also took the directional pad. This is a decision that I do not understand.

While I agree with your opinion that the BSD license was respected, I have to point out that both CUPS and Webkit are not Apple creations.

CUPS was started in 1997 by Michael Sweet, was adopted by Apple in Mac OS X in 2002 and in 2007 Apple bought the CUPS source code.

Webkit is a fork of KHTML. KHTML started in 1998, was forked in 2001 by Apple into Webkit and Webkit itself was open sourced in 2005.

Apple did indeed give their contributions back to the community, but those projects are not Apple creations as a whole. Also, the fact that Apple has given back more than they have benefited is debatable, if those two examples are the only things that spring to mind.

The male micro USB connector is not symmetrical as its big brother, as it is trapezoidal, and on the wider side it has two small hooks that anchor it inside the female connector on the phone. So, as long as you have memorized the orientation of the female connector on the phone, it is dead easy to plug in the male connector, even in the dark. It's pretty much what i do almost every night before bed. The hooks are really easy to identify by touch.

I use a Smart Master/Slave Power Strip for this. The computer is the master, and when it goes to standby all the other stuff (monitor, speakers, printer, desk lamp) get a hard shutdown. They are not too expensive, I think they start at around 20$. I recommend you search for one with adjustable sensitivity for the master outlet draw just in case, but I don't think event the cheapest fixed ones are calibrated for less than your 6W.

My laptop is neither giant, nor ugly, nor noisy, and can connect to my TV with a (ok, not really so) tiny HDMI cable. It's way more powerful than my 360 and can use its controller. Still I game on the 360, because it's a gaming system and I don't have (or even can) to fiddle with it in order to game.

And yes, I am married and I can guarantee that the moment I connect the tablet to the TV my wife will absolutely need it just then to look up something online. Or my phone will ring if I try to do the same.

I don't think I really got why Murphy's Law was so important until I got married.

Also, it's not really the same thing if before I start a new game I have to waste half an hour to tweak an acceptable gamepad profile for my hacked DS3 controller. That half hour might well be all the gaming time I'll have that evening.

I definitely wasn't implying that. What i was saying is that the argument of "Why would people want to game on a Ouya, when they can game on their phones/tablets?" is very similar to "Why would people want to game on consoles, when they can game on their PCs/laptops?", and that consoles still dominated general purpose devices this gen (and previous gens, probably).

Also, i don't think that Ouya's success depends on basement dwelling developers, because it should support pretty much all higher-profile Android games with minimal effort from their developers, and should provide a better experience than a phone/tablet tethered to a TV and with no standardized controller, even if said phone/tablet was superior hardware wise.

Anyway, we are still very early and although I think Ouya appears to get many things right (for example an integrated gaming environment similar to Live will be a very big draw, and they appear to be preparing that), there are many ways in which all of this could go south. And even if it will prove to be a non starter as a gaming platform (and I don't think it will, although I would not hazard to predict its long term success), I still am excited about having an officialy supported XBMC box for 110$.

I'm afraid I can't follow your argument. I probably should have been more specific and say that i was referring to the current generation of consoles versus PCs, as the arguments made by brunes69 apply almost verbatim there.

But I really must ask: what relevance has 1977 in this case? The PC as we understand it today came out in 1981. 2600 was itself a console. The holy trinity I presume refers to the other consoles released in that year. Apple I was launched in 1976, but I don't think you were referring to that, either.

The fact is that those exact same arguments could be made about consoles vs. PCs, and we all know how that went. The main advantage that a console (including this one) has is the fact that it is a standardized platform. Android games at the moment have very bad or nonexistent gamepad support. Because the Ouya will be a consistent target it will pretty much guarantee that the Android games that will appear going forward will have a controller profile for it. And a TV friendly layout. And will just work with no extra fiddling.

Exclusive games are a big boost for a console's adoption, but I think that it is not a strict requirement. COD was a natural fit for PC, and still most of its sales were on consoles. Because consoles are easier to use, cheaper and require very little hardware knowledge to operate.

The fact that their hardware was pretty much outdated at release time has never stopped the actual generation of consoles. And I don't think it will matter much for the Ouya either. What will make the difference will be the developer support for it, and at this time the signs for it are pretty positive.

And finally, this device is not made particularly for the average geek. Yes, they are using our interest to get and keep the buzz online, but this device is for the average gamer or even casual that will, hopefully, be interested in a cheap console. I hope it succeeds, we could use a console that is developer and hacker friendly being adopted by the general market.

What do you mean? You have this exact choice in Windows 7: multiple instances represented by a single icon, or every instance a new slot on the taskbar.

To wit: Taskbar - Right click - Taskbar - Taskbar Buttons: Always combine, hide labels (default Windows 7 setting), Combine when taskbar is full (XP behavior), Never combine (Windows 9x behavior).