Democratic republic is what I was taught.

10 years ago when I bought the Tivo, SageTV if it was even available yet was in its infancy. Regardless I believe I paid less than $300 dollars for the Tivo box so your $590 solution wouldn't have been much of a savings if any. Also, I've got to say that myTivo has far outlasted any PC I've ever owned. It took almost 10 years to fail, and I think the only problem is with the modem. But I've moved on to Roku rather than repair it.

As one of the "fools" who paid for lifetime service I'd like to inject some facts here. I paid something like $300 for lifetime, and used that service for almost ten years before the box failed from hardware issues. Had I not purchased the lifetime service I would have paid somewhere around $1200 for that service during the same time. In fact I could still repair the box and keep using it if I chose. So please explain to me where it was foolish to pay $300 rather than $1200?

I would argue that ID can not accurately/honestly be presented as a "theory" at all, at least not in the sense of the word as used by Science. Because that would connote that it had amassed a body of supporting evidence, which it has not. However, ID could honestly be presented as a hypothesis, although a nearly useless one in that it makes no predictions and is fundamentally (pun intended) un-testable. Perhaps it could be used as a good example of a poorly formed hypothesis? ID could also be useful fodder in a discussion of Occam's Razor, but it would need to be in the role of a negative example which introduces unnecessary additional assumptions.

Whether this "implies" that the building blocks of life were delivered via this method is a secondary hypothesis. I feel that a more important implication is that these "building blocks" can develop in a particularly harsh, non-earth environment. This gives more credence to the notion that life could have arisen on the primordial earth as postulated by science. And it gives credence to the notion that life may well have arisen elsewhere in the universe.

For that to be true the birds would have to be agents of the mice. And that seems a bit far fetched.

But can it replicate......"Earl Grey hot" ?

Hmmm didn't know that one, thanks looks interesting. But I may have to disqualify him for not actually being a rat ..... I think.

With things like the Asus EEE Pc, and web enabled phones doing so well, there's definitely a market segment here. But at almost $700 they're already coming in at the high end of that segment. You can get a pretty well appointed laptop for that kind of money. I think they need to bring the price way down to really compete.

No offense intended. My point is that the mid 40s and up camp (including me ;) are likely to think of Flowers for Algernon first. Since many of us already read it in high school when secret of NIMH came out. And were perhaps a bit (or more) too old for the movie. People roughly your age I would expect might think first of Secrets of NIMH, as you point out already in sequel mode and no doubt on TV a lot. I don't know how many 20 and under there are on Shashdot, but I expect they might think first of Pinky and the Brain. I know about the later 2 because I have kids. I'm not sure where the mice from Hitchhiker's Guide fall in. But it's a reoccurring theme, or perhaps meme and I find that interesting. Maybe the real question is how old are the researchers?

Me too, but if there are any younger folks on the list perhaps N.I.M.H or even "the Brain" would strike the same nerve.

Or in this case ex-ter-mi-RAT!