Unfortunately that's one issue outside the scope of the mythtv project.

The HDHomeRun Prime technically does support CableCARD usage with Linux - but only for stations marked as "copy freely." If your cable provider decides to place any more restrictive copy flags on it (now or later), then your out of luck.

To make things even more annoying, even if you have an Xbox360 to use as a supplement for those premium channels, it can't tune the encrypted stations live without a Win7 box to serve as a pass-through.

Cable companies want above else for you to use their hardware and their services (DVR, cable box, etc) and are still fighting tooth and nail to cripple competing services on every front.

If they can send a firmware update to the phone, then they can brick it. All they'd need to do is push a special (invalid) update only to that one user, who would then need to be dumb enough to accept it if the update can't be remotely forced.

Realistically though, I think bricking is overkill in this case - by definition if its bricked, the phone should not be recoverable if there was a mistake.

All they need to do is log the phones unique ID, add it to a list shared by all carriers using compatible technology and prevent any such phone from being activated on their network. I believe the Europeans have already been doing this for years - with both smart and dumb phones. Some non-GSM US carriers will do this as well (except for the sharing-the-lists part).

Bonus points if they go to the effort of (with a court warrant) letting the phone on anyway as a type of "honeypot" while they remotely activate the GPS to track the thief.

I like that idea, though having it expire immediately upon changing hands would just prevent them from being sold in the first place. I think a far better solution (as in easier to get legislated) would be to impose a "half-life" on patents. Each time a Patent is sold/transferred the remaining time until the patent expires is cut in half. A win-win all around.

For that matter, such a rule would work nicely for copyrights to. Particularly if the half-life rules are crafted to apply to biological people and not corporations. So if an author/artist passes away and the copyright is passed on instead of entering the public domain, the remaining duration is at least cut in half.

Actually, Netflix Streaming does support 5.1 DD sound now. They added support to it for the PS3 early last year, and supposedly added it to the Xbox with the last major dashboard update (though I haven't actually tested that yet).

But yes - BD always looks better than Netflix streaming, even at its highest quality, and in theory can also give better sound quality if you have a 7.1 DTS-HD system. They'll match it eventually, but the bandwidth isn't there just yet. That said, some of their HD content is comparable to BD and you have to look very hard to notice a difference.

+1

If you just want to teach new developers command-line Unix tools, Cygwin is definitely the way to go. If you just want to give them a taste of Linux, distribute some VMs with a distro of choice on it. I've always preferred Ubuntu as the newbie distro of choice, but I haven't really taken a good look at the current state of distros from that perspective in a while.

Realistically for the average user, once you install the OS for them and choose a desktop environment, the choice of distribution is almost irrelevant. More importantly however, if you suspect you can turn a fair number of users in your company to Linux (and your company is large enough), get a site license for an enterprise-grade version to simplify support and management -- you know 'average' users will be asking questions, so better to standardize where possible.

And within a few months of its release the fine hackers at xda-developers.com unlocked the webtop to work as a fully-featured desktop operating system. Hence, this is not new. This is simply Canonical claiming credit for re-packaging what's already been done.

OT: Come to think of it, what has Canonical done in Ubuntu Desktop lately besides forcing Unity, adding an installer and a few configuration GUIs that isn't already in Debian? (Note: I do think Ubuntu does a great job of neatly packaging Linux for new users with user-friendly installers and such, but for myself I've been a lot happier since I switched over to Debian Squeeze.)

The selection of DRM-free books (and specifically Android-compatible audiobooks) is highly limited on OverDrive, but they otherwise have a reasonably large selection now.

While all of MD uses OverDrive though, the availability of books does vary based on county. You must register at your local library, and that gives you access only to those books licensed by that County's library system.

More importantly, the interface for actually sorting through the books on OverDrive is still horrible. In particular, it gets annoying when you browse through and find for example books 3 and 5 of some series (on different pages of results), but books 1 and 2 are not in the system. Or at least that's what I routinely find with the audiobooks (great for long drives), even when I include the Windows-only file formats.

I recall taking one or two CS classes with a similar methodology.

Basically, the class was broken up into teams of 3-5 students and given a problem to solve. The final grade was a combination of the groups final answer, and individual write-ups by each student explaining the solution. Those write-ups may include a description of what you agree/disagree with in the overall group answer, and a description of what parts you specifically contributed to.

This, particularly with larger classes and randomly-chosen teams, does a good job of fairly testing students abilities as a group and as an individual at the same time. Those that don't understand the work or do not participate fully will easily stand out when the individual contributions are read.

Come to think of it, the same professor also occasionally walked out of the classroom for several minutes during regular (non-group) exams knowing full-well that a majority of the class would start talking/collaborating as soon as she left. In those cases, the nature of the test, and the teacher's implicit compliance, still made it more of an impromptu collaboration than actual cheating.

Simple, it's roughly e*x*s, where e=the mass of an electron, s=the size of the file in bits, and x is the average number of electrons needed to store each bit on the chosen storage medium. In this case, mass may appear to vary based on the density of the chosen storage medium.

Alternatively, mass approaches infinity as the file is moved across fiber optic links at the speed of light. WARNING: Attempting to duplicate a file in this state may create a rift in the profit-time continuum.

+1

Even 512MB RAM would be better. I still plan on getting (at least) one, but more RAM + MPEG-2 support would make its usage as an HD MythFrontend a lot more practical.

Kinect in the living room makes sense - voice/gesture commands in place of a remote control is surprisingly useful (when it works). On a laptop though -- what does the Kinect give that a touch screen can't do better? I mean outside of adult entertainment...

On the other hand, if it can support gestures with your eyes, then it might be useful. For example, gaze at a specific window/monitor and having it automatically come into focus could be quite a convenience ... but I don't think we'll see that for a while.

It's American Circa 1900 in terms of work conditions. "harsh tones poverty, absence of social programs, unpleasant living and working conditions, and hopelessness prevalent among the working class, which is contrasted with the deeply-rooted corruption on the part of those in power"

You mean to say there are still people that watch commercials on TV? Or are you referring to those annoying ads in Hulu? ;-)

Between Online Sreaming (Netflix,Hulu) and DVRs (MythTV with auto-flag+skip commercials) TV commercials are quickly losing their relevance as the best place to be "seen and heard." News outlets, social media, retail stores - that's where the real PR action is nowadays.

Same here, though I kind of knew they were still around from a few random encounters with their website or magazine in the store (on average once every other year...).

Anyone remember SwatPro, their spinoff magazine printing just game cheat codes? Short-lived, but memorable in the days before the net took over.

I also recall at some point in the late 90s losing interest in GamePro when I realized that 3/4 of the magazine seemed to be nothing but ads...

"Oh, people can come up with statistics to prove anything. 14% of people know that" - the Immortal words of Homer Simpson