I disagree. We are slowly migrating to using iPads (and Android tablets) in the field for many of our users. They still have the ability to use a laptop, but 90% of what they do can be done on an iPad (including printing/scanning). Part of our business involves getting signatures from customers out in the field. Carrying a laptop and signature tablet is more cumbersome than the iPad. They still have laptops, but those are more stationary than anything else these days. I think you are going to see iPads more and more in business, especially for those that hate lugging around a laptop.

I can believe it. When was the last time you went to a theater? Annoying patrons, incredible volume levels, unreasonable prices for food, and ~20 minutes of ads and previews before the show.

Now that I'm pushing toward the middle of life with small children, going to the movie theater is more of a chore than anything else. Very few theaters around my location have anything starting after 5:15pm but before 7:30pm. I'd like to take the wife and kid to go see a movie, but I need to either take off from work and skip dinner, or go to the later showing and have the kid out late. This is just one example, but I know I'm not the only parent that is concerned about their children getting dinner and going to bed on time.

The second issue is cost. My understanding is that the theaters make very little per showing from ticket sales, but make it up with popcorn and sodas. If I were to get tickets, popcorn/snacks, and sodas I would be in about $60 for one evening's entertainment for the family. If we leave the kid with a sitter that can get even more expensive.

Volume levels, annoying patrons, and expensive prices are all what is keeping me from the theater. I don't have an extra $60+ in my budget to spend each weekend. If they can get that down to $20 that is something I would do on a regular basis. Until then it just doesn't make sense.

On the other hand, we are fortunate enough to live where there is still a double-feature drive-in movie theater. They are generally smart about their showings and will place a kid-friendly movie as the first showing and put an adult one second. This works out very well when the kid is asleep in time for the second showing, or we can go home if the weather takes a turn for the worse. $5 per person and I can bring my own food (or buy their reasonably-priced snacks, usually about half what the other theater charges).

This is really only the tip of the iceberg for me, but they have a long way to go before they get my movie theater dollars again.

$12,500? And that's not including walls, seating, and sound control? You overpaid. By a lot.

$750 for the drives
$200 for the server box
$400 for the HTPC front end (Zotac mini-itx with case, memory, and HD. This is a high estimate.)
$500 for the receiver
$1500 for the speakers (I'm going with a high-end speaker since you apparently designed a room around all this)
$100 for cables

I've got $3450 before the TV, not including tax or shipping. If you went with Windows on both you can add another $600 for Windows 7 64-bit Ultimate.

I see an 80" LED from Best Lie is only $5k.

Where did the other $4k go?

For those _specific_ purchases, no. But it isn't about just your purchases or mine. As an earlier poster mentioned, what if you purchased some home theater equipment recently as well as some tickets to Jamaica? Even if those show up as "Recent Best Buy Purchase" and "Vacation Getwaway Package Purchase", it doesn't take long to piece together that you may have bought something and are going away for a weekend or longer.

Yes, this is a reaching argument. But who is allowed access to that data? How can I get a copy of the information being shared about me? Can I opt out of this, and is it opt-out by default?

Maybe some of the stuff I enjoy in my home life doesn't really need to be shared with my co-workers. This may sound silly to most, but I worked at a company that was very "family oriented" (funny, I worked more overtime there than anywhere else). This company frowned upon consuming alcohol, even in our personal lives. If we spoke about drinking over the weekend we generally received shunning and evil-eye stares from those who heard the conversation. What if the advertisements show skimpy girls and deals on liqueur because I visited a bar over the weekend?

This kind of thing meshes all parts of my life together and gives people the ability to know things about me that I don't want them to know about. That's what's wrong about this for me.

I think the part that doesn't make sense is that Bush is responsible for the actions of those under him but Obama isn't. Bush never comes out and says "hey, we've got an open thing going on here!" and then continues to stall or deny FOIA requests. He just never says transparent in the first place and you liken that to them being the problem.

On the flip side of that coin, Obama says "Hey, we're going to make things transparent" and _nothing_ changed. The difference is you think Obama is not responsible for his subordinates but Bush is. Hence, "LOL WUT".

FWIW, I don't like either policy.

There is- it's a fork of XBMC called MediaPortal. It has DVR support and tv-over-ip support for running one major DVR and a bunch of clients.

If you want boxee to be a DVR, you're missing the point of boxee altogether. Boxee's point is to display all the media content from the Internet on a 10-ft interface.

People listening/paying or not is not a defining attribute to being an art critic. It is to being a popular art critic, but not just being an art critic (or critic of anything else, for that matter). If the audience is only himself, he is still a critic.

Just as it is completely in the "artist's" right to call it art, it is in our individual rights to determine if we consider it art. And likewise it is up to the population as a whole to determine if it is important or inane art.

Personally, I consider this inane.

I always felt the webOS was just a little too small for that screen the crammed it into. I personally found the one-button escape to be similar to my iPhone, but swiping through the open cards much easier. And the touch screen on the Pre was about as on-par as you can get to the Apple devices (Android devices have yet to come near those two on touch "smoothness").

I am hoping for a entry-level device as opposed to the premium spec'd one. Mostly because for what Apple has spec'd for the iPad, the competitors seem to be $100-200 more for similar devices. Motorola had the name in 2001 if they wanted to push a "premium" device like this, but after a horrible run of RAZR's, ROKR's, and mediocre Droids, this new device seems outpriced for what you get. If they can put a $300 webOS device (maybe a 7" or 8"?) with good enough performance and onboard h.264 rendering (and Netflix, the de-facto streaming standard), they have a good chance at winning my dollars vs. Apple's devices.

I think the bigger issue isn't that it will be 10 cents per GB, but closer to 10 dollars per GB. We, the customer, are at their mercy for billing. Because of the government-granted monopolies in many areas and borderline collusion on pricing, there isn't anywhere for customers to go to get better products or services.

And with the other metered services you mention, the user is depriving someone else from using those items. They are physical, tangible things (including electricity because of what it takes to generate). Network packets aren't depriving someone else of their usage in any reasonable sense. The only thing they require after the line is laid is the electricity, which is already a metered item

It depends on your city and state. In Texas minimum wage is ~$7.25, but minimum wage for wait staff is $2.13. Tips are considered part of your compensation, so if you report honestly to the restaurant and government, you get hosed. To pull $37.5k working 40 hours/week as a waiter in Texas would require $33k in tips. The same job in California is minimum wage regardless, and would require only $20k in tips. Source: http://www.paywizard.org/main/Minimumwageandovertime/MinimumWageTIPRecevers

I've seen it purchased, but I live in a college town. Twice a year Mommy and Daddy come in to decorate junior's dorm room on the cheap, and the rest of the year it sits.

Yes! This would be great to have. I have media centers attached to all my TV's, but still need the TV remotes just to turn them on and off. A wake-on-lan for my TV would keep it down to one remote (or phone, web interface, etc.).

Yes. I don't quite think it will double, but there are quite a few that have been waiting. My wife won't give up her Verizon service for anything and as a result she is very excited to get the iPhone there. When she gets one, her mother will get one so they can do facetime. Not a huge jump for gaming, but definitely one for apps in general.

I'll voice my support as well. For quick bash scripts, restarting services, etc. I haven't found a better one out there. The built-in VNC tunneling makes this absolutely worth $10 and then some. Then again, I've never been in a coffee shop and needed to debug lines of code in my scripts because the remote backups failed.

iSSH does exactly what I need it to do- quick and easy SSH and VNC tunneling in between games of Angry Birds.

The problem with the auto-update feature in Skype vs. gaming is that most gaming computers will be close to top-of-the-line. Most computers used for Skyping will not be top of the line.

From experience, the 5.0 version of Skype doesn't work as well as the 3.8 branch. Switching between windowed and full-screen video on the 5.0 branch takes ~4 sec to accomplish, with the audio becoming choppy at the same time. In addition, the video is choppy and audio quality is scratchy at best. The 3.8 branch doesn't have these issues, but can't do multi-user video either. This is an older machine running XP (P4 3.0HT w/ 2GB PC2-6400 memory), but should still be capable of doing things with the newer version.