Hate the game indeed. The whole system is rigged to favor the fat cats. Obama's "job czar"??? Jeff Immelt, as CEO of General Electric, has orchestrated a situation where one of the largest employers in the US and generator of billions in profits pays a pittance (if anything at all) in US corporate taxes.

Republican...Democrat....they're all for sale to the highest bidder. And people just wink at that while the media waves their hands about who Kim Kardashian is blowing this week. zzzzzzzzzz.....

I've had a Roku XS for a couple of months now. I bought it specifically to be an unobtrusive way for me to consume media I already have (either using USB storage or over my local network)....a cheap media jukebox if you will. It's OK for that, but the interface is quite slow and not particularly intuitive to use. Once you've actually found what you want to consume, it's a capable player and has a tiny (think hockey puck) footprint.

As far as streaming goes, I tried it since I can get a lot of content free as an Amazon prime member. Would I pay extra for the privilege of streaming content? Nope.

And there's that gaming aspect. It came with Angry Birds. The kids played with it for a day or two and then forgot about it. Would I pay for games on my Roku? Nope.

Actually, no. This is what happens when you outsource manufacturing to vendors in countries like China where it is common practice for them to quietly substitute parts between the reference design stage and when the device hits production. Sometimes, you get lucky and they even tell you in advance that they're doing this and you have a chance to evaluate impact on the design. Most times, they simply do it and pocket the difference in cost while hoping not to get caught.

When I am stuck traveling with the company laptop, I bring along a bootable USB fob with the latest Linux Mint on it and use that when I'm "off the clock." Some companies will try to lock down the bios so you can't even do that (forces the encrypted HD to boot first). So if that's the case, I'd just bring your own laptop/tablet along and call it a day.

I don't agree with companies to do this kind of thing, but in these economic times it's not worth losing a job over.

Best,

My PHB says that free stuff can't be any good. Surely, we'd be much better off by throwing 7 figures at Symantec. ;)

Seriously, have you seen what EMC and Netapp charge for drives? They could afford a temporary price in drives without passing anything along to their customers and still make a tidy profit. Pardon me if I don't shed a tear for this temporary uptick in their materials cost.

Keep in mind that China's recently launched aircraft carrier was ostensibly purchased from the Ukraine to be a "floating casino" in Macau. For an entertaining recap of how they got the ship, see the wikipedia article here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_aircraft_carrier_Varyag

While public deception is certainly not unique to China, I think most people would agree that their military aspirations are more opaque than most people think.

Best,

I wouldn't trust those clods with printed maps (which are all censored to suit their tastes) so why on earth would I trust them to not only provide me with nav data, but to have the ability to track my receiver? Jeebus....

All this while the vast majority of their country lives in what most first world countries would consider abject poverty.

At short distances, a metal coat hanger will be indistinguishable from "audiophile" speaker cable in a blind listening test. You've got to laugh at the folks that spend thousands on interconnects, power cables and speaker cables. I liken it to people buying a Bentley instead of a Hyundai when the design requirement is to deliver groceries from point A to point B. However, human nature being what it is, these folks will always find a way to rationalize the expense with smoke, mirrors, and flowery words. And there's always that segment of people who will buy the most expensive of anything simply because they can. *shrug*

Find yourself a cheap econobox gasser and convert it to electric. I have a soft spot for 1st generation Saturns since they're light and reasonably resistant to rust. It's not THAT expensive to do (US$10K in parts plus your labor) since the original car is practically free.

http://www.phoenixeaa.com/photoalbum/streetevs/suiter1/main.html

This "army" has been a staple of the CCP for years. They're usually pretty easy to spot on Chinese language sites and (increasingly) on English language sites. The name comes from the reputed 5 mao (or 1/2 of a Chinese yuan) they're paid for each message. That's about 7 US cents. For the Chinese psyche, it's much more satisfying to see a large number of shill posts that "agree" with the party line than to "waste" effort on even a thin veneer of truth.

Muahahaha. What's good for the goose. Though I suspect your sarcasm is lost on the wu mao dang who will inevitably post snide replies to this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party

I completely agree. Many firms/individuals have the chops/staff to manage things without a support contract. We've got a few hundred production Linux boxes around (mixture of Redhat/CentOS/Oracle) and I can't remember us EVER dropping the dime on a call to RH for anything. We've got enough Linux savvy admins around that we can usually get things sorted quickly on our own. Our corporate overlord has dictated that we stop using RHEL (cuz the support contracts are expensive) and begin standardizing on Oracle's "unbreakable" cruft, which is apparently cheaper to buy support contracts for. Fortunately, the CIO of our subsidiary had some sack and backed our decision to go the free route. We decided to skip the circus that is the CentOS development team/process and will be standardizing on Scientific Linux for all new installs and will be migrating any public facing boxes to SL since CentOS has been unable to meet commitments to get updates out in a timely manner for a couple of years now.

So if you don't need support, there's no moral imperative to buy any. Personally, I'd rather use our finite budget on hardware and making sure my staff is appropriately paid.

Best,

Ya think? :)

I think I'll decline (on both memberships).

It wasn't only this release. Their releases have been slipping farther and father behind as time has gone on. The unforgivable part was the complete lack of updates for CentOS5 while the hamster wheels were spinning trying to get 5.6 out the door. We're talking several months. That's just not acceptable. When people complained, they got a steady diet of "if you don't like it, you can go elsewhere." OK, message received.

We've stopped using it at work as a result and will be using SL going forward.

Best,