To quote my friend Auric Goldfinger: "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times, it's enemy action."

I second the Roku/WDTV props. When I was shopping around for such a box I was leaning toward WDTV but its lack of DVD menu support was a show stopper.

I ended up going with an Asus O!Play and never looked back. $79 for a beautiful HDMI picture and it plays absolutely everything with zero hassles. The menus could be prettier, but it's more important for me that it just works.

The whole thing reminds me of Blockbuster Video and their somewhat arbitrary "family friendly" policies impacting how movies get made. Now Blockbuster is getting their asses handed to them by competitors with more choice and/or convenience(Netflix, Redbox), and I wouldn't be too surprised if Apple found themselves in the same boat in a few years.

OK Ebert, it's time for you to stop trolling on the subject of video games being art or not; you've already made up your mind.

Everyone has different ideas on what art is. Here's mine: art is how an artist expresses something. As long as the artist is genuine in their attempt at expression, that's art. Video games met that criteria long ago.

Of course the medium of video games will change considerably over the next 80-90 years just like it has for medium of film. I doubt anyone could look at the video games of today and accurately predict that future.

Just stop pouring those beers in your ear and you'll be all right.

...it would certainly explain why there are so many rude cell phone users :-)

It's less about greed on Google's part and more about the usual cost-benefit analysis of doing business with China's repressive government. Google just stayed until the disadvantages outweighed the benefits.

Google didn't come to this decision because they found their moral compass all of a sudden--otherwise they wouldn't have agreed to play censor for the government in the first place. Like any corporation they were attracted to China by the money and the audience, but after finding out the government was all too willing to help Baidu and hinder Google they re-evaluated their decision. The cyber attack may have been the breaking point, but it may just as well have been a convenient event for Google to justify their standoff with the government.