We most certainly need Slashdot VirtualCrypto to gild comments like these. Karma alone is not enough and this comment is too damned funny.

FTA: "Boxee has had a hard time adapting to the quickly changing environment where appliances have converged with televisions (morphing into Smart TVs), and I'm sure Samsung is looking to integrate the software in some form or another into their smart TVs."

No. Boxee shunned the very people who championed their product, locking down their previously open software, based on already-open software, and mating it to poor hardware. Boxee abandoned all that made them Boxee to begin with. (I can't seem to find the multi-page comment thread from Boxee's blog when they announced EOL for the still-buggy Boxee-box - maybe someone can get it [FIXED].)

For those who aren't in the loop, a simple (and not yet fully exploited) "hack" was found: http://boxeeplus.com/

This.

Cost calculations must factor in time spent watching and/or forwarding through ads amongst other things. There is other time as well, including dealing with said cable company, paying said bills etc. etc. I'm not even arguing that it sways the calculation one way or another, but it must be considered.

I feel like the broken record of my circle of friends but time must be valued at an exceptionally high rate. It is our most limited resource and, if my own calculations are correct, the more of that time is spent simply watching tv, the more limited the resource itself becomes.

I just posted this an hour ago: http://www.youtube.com/user/41D57#p/a/u/0/c5cF8Us4cK4

While the video pokes fun at size and boot time, for the average desktop user, those things remain largely the same.

We use these: http://www.wiebetech.com/products/cases.php

It's like having a proper hard-case for each disk, and although it won't protect them from a fall it makes it easy to line them all up on a bookshelf or in a rack/drawer system and pull them out when needed.

We also read each drive at least once every 6 months to ensure the drive can re-new any weak magnetic sectors/blocks.

1) Post unsubstantiated story regarding any Microsoft product malfunctioning.
2) Slashdot engine automatically posts
3) you know the rest.

I've been reading slashdot for so very long now, it's almost like an addiction, but i think it's finally time i erased my bookmark.

I have to admit though i'm pleased that, at the current time, the kneejerk reaction so typical of the slashdot community hasn't fired yet.

It's not 1998 anymore. Microsoft software isn't perfect, but neither is anything else created by human hands.

Bye, community. It's been.. well, i'm not sure how to properly describe it.

Wrong. DVD+R was released after DVD+RW. DVD+RW works best as filesystem accessible rewriteable media. The format was updated to include write-once media in order to compete with DVD-R. (You'll notice that even the write-once DVD+R discs bear the stylized RW logo.)

Check here for some more info on the entire DVD spectrum.

A few other quick notes:
1. The +RW alliance claims 100% compatibility with the DVD-Video standard. I've had no trouble using +R discs on very old DVD drives and DVD-Rom drives. Although, as has been said above, there seems to be a huge amount of variation across different drives and players.

2. +R/+RW media does not have the rediculous finalization (lead out) routine that's required with -R/-RW routines.

3. One more thing, formatting times for -RW are rediculous, whereas +RW media can format on the fly.

Although my drive is multiformat, the +RW camp has my vote through experience.