Ok, serious question here; has the intelligence level of Slashdot dropped sharply since last I came around?

You're right though, the Boxee tagging system is completely foolproof.

My father still owns one, and I've been over to his place to see it as recently as two weeks ago. I upgraded to the DroboPro FS and gave him my old Drobo FS. It is just as abysmal product compared to XBMC as it was in November.

And when the hell did it become totally acceptable to release a shitty product with the promise that it would become "okay" later on?

I actually held back.

Anyone on SlashDot is twice as intelligent as necessary to setup an XBMC install that would blow Boxee out of the water. I bought three Boxee Boxes and sent all three back, don't regret it for a second.

But I am legitimately curious what is the real significance of learning Pi to a more accurate measurement? I'm not a mathematician, physicist, or computer scientist.

Good point, which is why I'd never buy anything "counterfeitable" off of Ebay or any other source I didn't 100% trust.

I can't fathom the idea that counterfeit goods compete with authentic ones.

When I was in my teens, I could find counterfeit Movado watches for ~$30 that were indistinguishable from the real deal. Would I have bought real ones for $1500+? No.

Of course now that I want a real one, there's no chance in hell I'm going to settle for a fake.

I shouldn't have to.

Wow, did they really need to have an auto-playing video ad with obnoxious music at the bottom of the page? I'm pissed that I gave them even that one pageview. I won't be reading the article.

You still pay for some (or sometimes, all) of the class, of course.

Not always the case. I went to Purdue for Aviation Management (to become an air traffic controller) and for some odd reason they let students take computer classes in place of some of the other Gen-Ed stuff. I was able to test out of several classes, without having to pay a dime. It depends on the school.

FTFS:

"The technology is apparently mature enough to be deployed as part of ships' short-range missile defenses"

Thanks for clearing that up. Sounds like a speedbump, not an actual blockade.

"But any studio execs who thought 3D video would somehow end piracy would have to be complete idiots."

Who says they aren't complete idiots?

"What exactly is there to "figure out" about copying a 3D blu-ray over a normal blu-ray?"

I don't know. I'm not an expert in the field. That's why I made no assumptions about it being as easy as ripping a Blu-Ray movie.

"When I was a student I downloaded a few movies, now I just buy everything."

Same here, but I still like to buy my movies, and then rip them to a digital format for use with XBMC and the Boxee Box when it finally hits the shelves. I guess one of my big worries about the 3D BS is that movies, that would otherwise be quite good, could be poorly done just for the sake of a good 3D experience.

I think at the very least part of it has to do with piracy. I remember years ago when hddvd and bluray were first hitting the shelves they were heralded as the end of piracy. The logic was no one would be able to pirate a movie that clocks in at 40-50 gigs. Of course, thanks to h.264 and other codecs, downloading 1080p copies of movies is pretty trivial.

I suspect that studio execs are sitting around assuming no one will be able to figure out how to pirate 3-d movies. Of course, there are probably people much much smarter than they are trying to figure out how.

This just in, rain still likely to be wet.

You're right, but it still struck me as odd that people would just say "Hey stranger, take my card for the next 8 hours." It was pretty rare that I would still be there in the morning when they checked out, so that means I'd have to pass their card off to another low-wage employee to trust it with.

It was kind of crazy how often my GM would have to fight these dispute charges. People would get enraged that their breakfast wasn't gluten free or that the tv in the room wasn't big enough and then have their CC companies claim they never stayed at our hotel. 99% of the cases were decided in our favor, but it was still a massive hassle from people deciding to throw a fit.

Seems to me that people who submit false claims for disputing charges should be held liable for fraud themselves.