...too late. I already avoid Hulu because commercials are something that belong back in the 50s with embedded sponsor testimonials.

Tivo liberated me from commercials in the 90s.

Not going back.

> Even in the era of home theaters, how many of us really have such a setup at home where we'd be proud to show downloaded movies to our friends

I do.

It's part of the reason that I've pretty much given up on conventional movie theaters entirely. Beyond the new annoyances that have manifested in the last 20 years, the experience at a "real theater" just isn't sufficiently better to justify the bother.

Even if your local theater isn't crap, what your watching may not even be playing on any of their good screens.

It really doesn't take much. Pretty much anyone in suburbia has the resources to pull this off. Cinemas are doing remarkably well considering.

...except everyone understands that a "high fashion counterfeit" is usually of inferior quality to the original. This is one key area where "intellectual property" differs from manufacturing.

I wasn't aware that there were "special kinds" of cable companies. This seems like a crass attempt to move the goalposts. Someone is trying to change the rules in their favor and it's not the disruptive upstart.

"Rule of Law", perhaps you've heard of it.

Objection: relevance.

These other things are not the topic of discussion. They are just red herrings to distract from the fact that the US appears to have acted in a civilized manner this time.

Civilized behavior should not be swept under the rug because you have a hate-on for some particular country. Your nonsense undermines the positive reinforcement that encourages good behavior and discourages bad behavior.

Doesn't matter if it's the US or Hezbollah.

No. It was not a "sensible" comment for the time. Anyone with a lick of sense could see where the tech was going and could easily realize that you had to plan for the future.

PCs of the time were stuck in the kind of situation that Tannenbaum described not because of any inherent technical limitation but because Microsoft was a lame monopolistic sandbagger holding back the entire industry.

Even in 1992 there wasn't that much of a gap between the capabilities of proprietary Unix hardware and PCs. Some Unix machines even ran on microprocessors used by competing home computers.

That's why Linus created his own kernel to begin with.

...except this is cleaning water. It doesn't necessarily have to be fit for human consumption. It just has to be suitable for cleaning.

Dubai has access to plenty of water.

If it weren't for all of this fake controversy and bogus righteous indignation, I would have no idea what this book is. Perhaps it just didn't sell well at Costco. It's a warehouse store you know. You can't depend on an item being there the next time you visit even if it was there the last time.

These Tea Baggers seem to be missing the whole "Warehouse Club" concept here.

I might not be able to build a skyscraper but I can nail some boards together, plunge a toilet, wire a room, or lay some tile.

Basic home maintenance is something that everyone needs to understand regardless of whether they own their place or not. People need to know enough to be able to delegate to experts and not get robbed in the process. People need to understand what they are buying.

People need to be able to fend for themselves on a very basic level.

This American love of stupidity only serves to make for easier victims.

"Complex" is not for laymen. There is only so much that you can do with any "appliance". Beyond that, you actually have to know what you are doing. This "problem" has nothing to do with programming.

Once you get into "complex", you really do want something along the lines of a profession were people have to be licensed and they can be held accountable for their failures. For the "complex" stuff, we should be striving MORE for something comparable to real engineering or medicine rather than pushing for trained monkeys and amateurs.

Right tool for the job and all that...

It's the perfect libertarian excuse for corporate abuse. You don't have to go along with the abuse. You can just live like an Amish person and avoid the abuse if you really want to. It's all your "choice".

Oh Pulllleeeze. If you have a "new baby" then you certainly don't need some drunken jackass to keep you up all night. The "new baby" will be quite happy to do that all on it's own.

...although a screensaver can be a really simple thing. It doesn't need to be some power hungry monster that eats your entire download cap. This is simply the common developer problem of not being able to relate to the end user. They are used to having unlimited resources and code accordingly.

      More experienced vendors in the same space don't take such a boneheaded and obviously wrongful approach.

35G BluRay streams are not uncommon. Most of mine are over 30G.

The local hospital? Are you kidding? Do you know what kind of nasty stuff you can pick up at the hospital? Some of it is even anti-biotic resistant.

You don't want to be hanging out at the hospital any more than you absolutely have to. It's much like the Internet in this regard.