At one time hooked to our TV was a DirecTV box only. Today we have (in order of usage):

- Apple TV. This is what the kids hit first when looking for something to watch. Mostly Netflix cartoons, our Vimeo home videos, and our Photo Stream. We have never purchased or rented a program from Apple!

- XBox with Kinect for a gaming fix.

- Old re-purposed Dell. This is full of all the DVD's I did not want my kids destroying (locked safely away, and yes we do own them), and a way to access anything on the net the first two don't.

- A real antenna. Sports look horrible on my friends HDTV with all the compression! (needs fed through the computer... someday).

I would be OK with just the first two if Apple would open the interface up for more content. I would happily pay a small ($1-5) monthly fee for channels such as Discovery, Science, etc. I'm guessing this will only happen once these channels are replaced by new content producers that are 'net only.

Our house has a device made by Joslyn labeled "secondary surge suppressor" and "lightning protective device". It simply bolts to the main breaker box, and wires to each main supply line.

If I remember it was rather cheap ($35?). A google search of the model number finds only ebay hits, so apparently superseded.

I believe it is similar in function to this:
http://www.surgepack.com/transtrack-lp.htm

No idea on effectiveness, but perhaps something to research.

I'm confused. I thought the purpose for MPEG-LA was a cross licensing of all patents required for h.264 (with payment)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Standardization_committee_and_history

Most license requirements have exemptions for common use cases that have a reason to exist, and are not actually practicing, such as teaching or news coverage. For example you need a license to give financial advise, unless doing it as an instructor or as a member of the media. Imagine if every news person, blogger, and high school life science teacher had to have a Series 7 license to do their job.

This should be the same.

He did not take evasive action to avoid Venus, but did point to Venus and briefly discussed if it was an aircraft when he first woke up. He later made the evasive maneuver when he misjudged the position of another aircraft. The two events are only connected by the fact the pilot was entirely too exhausted.

To be specific uninstall Java. I did on my wife's mac, and she is yet to miss it. There is always the sandboxed java built into chrome if needed.

One argument is that this is simply a market choice, A) a free and open market that is easy to upload malware, or B) a closed market that is difficult to upload malware.

Perhaps, but I believe you can have both. If a third party was able to find this malware in the market, why can't Google? Google simply needs to make this a priority, and do a better job. Scanning and making sense of the data really is their core strength.

That does not pass the sniff test.

I am sure Apple would love all iPhones unlocked, eliminating the primary reason for jailbreaking. It would also keep old devices in service, giving Apple more "credit cards on file", and active on the iTunes store. In fact I could see Apple requiring unlocking to keep selling iPhones.

Locking the devices makes it more difficult for the very popular iPhone to work on competitors networks.

I have no insider knowledge, but locking iPhones only benefits AT&T.