You may already be using them, but have you considered a set of noise canceling earphones? I bought a pair for wearing while mowing the lawn and was extremely impressed. Unfortunately, the plug doesn't fit properly in the jack of my iPod, so I stopped using them when my old Creative MP3 player died and I joined the iRevolution. Back to ear plugs I went.

Actually, the Sleuth channel seems to be even worse at this than many others. They were recently showing a lot of James Bond movies, so I recorded several on my DVR. The volume during the movie actually seems lower than normal (I have to crank up the volume a couple of notches higher than most channels), but the volume during the commercials is insanely loud.

I guess I can look at the silver lining here. More than once these ear splitting commercials have woken me up when I fell asleep watching a movie. At least I got up and went to bed then instead of sleeping on the couch and winding up with a crick in my neck.

If anything, though, I catch even less of the commercials than I normally would as each commercial break is met with a frantic search for the remote so I can fast forward through them.

Remember, you're talking about the average user who goes out and buys a cheap RCA surround sound system for their house or who thinks that the stereo in their car is actually good. To most people out there LOUD == good. Try convincing them that the Shure's sound better.

Looks like a bunch of people here are bash.org fans...

Actually, I've run into the same problem before. If it looks like this mouse might start to gain traction in the FPS community, I'll have to consider it yet. Right now I don't see any TF2 configs, but I'm hoping for one. I did buy some frag pedals from Thinkgeek, but they aren't as useful as I'd hoped. I just end up leaning backwards in my chair instead of actually activating the button with my foot. :/

Colonize? I think you mean conquer, and enslave the troglodites populations to mine dilithium for our fast than light ships. Hopefully we'll be able to genetically modify navigators for them. Or find some handsome young captains to fly around and defeat gods. /me Still mourns for Adonis

Maybe I'm just old, but these days I play most games for the story. If I don't want a story, then I go play TF2 or some other multi-player shooter or break out the NES for some old school platformer action. In general, though, I tend to prefer the immersive experience that comes with good story telling. I like to feel like I'm playing in an interactive movie of some sort.

Oh, I'm not picking on them there. Well, maybe a little bit. They all drink the Apple kool-aid to an extent. That said, I'm willing to concede that the Macs are still a great choice for the art department. While Windows PCs have caught up with the Macs in some areas in the past decade or so, I still think Macs are the way to go for graphic design if for no other reason than that's what our art department is used to. OSX is a slick operating system (BASH shell with mass market software support? Yes please.) and I probably use my own Mac just as often as I use my PC here. Macs and Windows PCs each have their own pluses and minuses. In the end, though, the primary reason we buy Macs for them is because that's what makes them happy.

It's under consideration. Unfortunately, the biggest issue I have with iMacs is that our troubleshooting/recovery process is limited with a closed system like the iMac. With the G5 towers we have currently, if I have a serious hardware failure, I can always pull the drive and put it in a spare G5 in order to get the user back up and running in about 2 minutes. I can't do that with an iMac. Additionally, there's the expandability factor. Our G5's are still being used past a normal life cycle simply because we have been able to upgrade the hard drives and the memory as we've gone along in order to meet current software requirements. Again, I can't do that with iMacs. I just need to do a TCO study to see which will be more cost effective in the long run.

While I would imagine that the parent poster was half joking, I would imagine that you could point a remote control (Apple mind you -- this thing does appear to have an IR receiver on the front) and make this do some fun stuff. Mind you, if you're wanting an Apple PVR, there's always the Apple TV combined with a PVR solution on a back-end Mac.

I'm actually somewhat surprised that Apple hasn't updated the Apple TV to work as a DVR by now. I would imagine that there's too much competition in the market since a DVR is already a part of most premium and mid-range cable/satellite provider solutions. I'm pretty sure that analog cable subscribers these days can be broken up into 3 groups: 1) those too poor or too cheap to pay for a higher package (me right out of college), 2) those too technologically incompetent to operate or care about a DVR (my grandmother), or 3) those geeks who, for one reason or another, just simply want to roll their own solution. :)

Have you gone inside of a mini? I have. I can't imagine
any of the pretentious types that would buy this sort of
machine would appreciate the experience.

The pretentious types that would buy this sort of machine won't ever go into it anyway. They'll take it to their nearest Apple certified technician at the first sign of trouble. Whether or not he'll be able to recover the data on the software RAID or simply reinstall OSX Server over the old data is another matter entirely. (In my experience it's a 50/50 shot whether they'll reinstall the OS without backing up the data first.)

A £800 mid-range headless box from Apple would surely hit the sweet spot for quite a lot of people.

That it would. Although those aren't the people that Apple are looking for. If they provide a mid-range headless system, then why would people buy iMacs? A mid-range machine would eat into the (likely very profitable) iMac sales. Those that need more "oomph" than the mini have to buy an iMac -- and what a great value it is! Why look! You get both a computer and a monitor for that price!

And those that absolutely have to have an expandable machine are forced to step up to the Mac Pros, and they certainly aren't cheap. Apple makes you pay dearly for that privilege.

Apple has priced themselves out of the commodity market, and that's exactly their strategy. Macs are seen as chic, cool, and exclusive -- a luxury item. Sure, you can buy this cheap PC that will get the job done, but if you want to look cool while doing it, spend a little more for that Mac and be the envy of all of your friends.* Putting out a box that would compete toe to toe with a PC, which is exactly what an expandable £800 machine would do, would dilute their whole corporate image. They try very hard not to compete with PCs on an apples to apples basis, and that strategy seems to be working very well for them.

Mind you, I'm not defending them. I'm an IT director in an advertising and communications agency where I have to deal with the reality of owning and operating Macs on a daily basis. I'm looking at a desktop refresh in the next 18 months for our art people, and those are the ones that will need expandable machines. A headless desktop priced less than or even similar to an iMac would be a no brainer. Instead, I'm stuck looking at the cost of Mac Pros, which have actually gone up in price over the past year with the introduction of the Nehalem processors. And, unfortunately, we'll buy them because our art directors are exactly the kind of customers that Apple targets. So, while I can't defend their marketing and pricing strategy, I can certainly understand and even respect it.

*Note: I had a very hard time not making the obvious car analogy. I'll let the readers make that analogy on their own.

To be honest, I'd agree that most people won't cancel their pre-orders. That said, I'm a member of a fairly large gaming community that does currently run COD4 and COD5 servers. We had actually been in the pre-planning stages to support MW2 as well. Until this announcement, obviously. Now, it would at least appear that the vast majority of our COD members are indeed canceling their pre-orders and signing the petition. For that matter, I've heard from several members who play our other games who have also canceled their pre-orders. In the end will a few hundred canceled orders make a big difference? Maybe not. But there are most definitely people are are canceling their orders over this. Only time will tell if the community outrage will make a difference on IW's decision here.

WTF is car camping? Sleeping in your car? That's what I do halfway home after a night at the bars when I realize I shouldn't be driving.

My idea of camping generally involves a tent. Preferably set up somewhere nice and pretty away from most modern conveniences other than those we bring with us. All of which are powered by removable batteries for convenience. Why on earth should I bring a solar panel just to charge one device?

That said, Wikipedia is not something I consider essential to a camping trip anyway. Still, my point is, not everybody wants or needs an iPod touch. There is a market for this device, you're just not a part of it.

Because every other encyclopedia out there will provide you with the plug gap for a Ford 5.0? Get real. Encyclopedias never have been fully comprehensive and have always been meant to only provide a user with a broad overview. Or am the only slashdotter who actually remembers the days of the Brittanica?