Can I Sream.It is a must-have smartphone app (or website). Anyone who makes one of these streaming boxes should just license a version that searches the catalogs of whatever services you've installed on the box. That alone would make all of these boxes tremendously more useful - it's really the missing key to this puzzle. That and more content, although a lot of progress has been made on this front - compare with Netflix's initial pitiful streaming selections.

I know Roku supports centralized search for some of their "channels" (apps).

I bet it's due to a single equals sign.

Android is sufficiently powerful for certain tasks, and TV's typically have a good (easy and intuitive) UI.

We've been hearing for a while about how casual games are the new norm, at the expense of the serious gamer/console market. We're also seeing "internet TV" functionality on high-end consoles. So this seems to fit that niche perfectly. It's less expensive and power hungry (as if anyone really cared about that - do they?).

I could see this working nicely for someone who wants to replace cable, and likes casual games more than OMG Graphics or Super Violence V, as long as the games are good. If the games are crap, then it's just an expensive Roku or Chromecast.

Steam, the distribution platform, is a closed garden. SteamOS, and the Steam Machines, are not. See http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamMachines/.

I'd recommend 240+. My work PC has a 120GB drive; and Win7, four versions of Visual Studio, SQL Server, and a few other apps pretty much fill it up. I've had to continually shuffle data including some source code to my secondary platter drive (slower compilation, boo) just to keep some space free (currently 3.3GB).

One of my favorite sounding cars is the BMW M1 Procar.

And a manual can be obnoxious in traffic (or parallel parking on ice), but in many other instances is more fun. Especially racing. There's a practical reason for a manual in racing, too, in that you get precise control of the engine speed, which is necessary to maximize traction.

If you have an Android phone, you can install Gmote and use your phone as the remote control. I've used it successfully with our Win7 laptop on the TV.

That's right, you have a moral obligation to buy the fastest internet access available to you.

Hmm, now that I think about it, I'm going to try this argument on my wife. If she doesn't let me buy an ultrabook, she hates humanity.

Facebook.

I'm sorry I haven't followed your arguments on this topic.

It sounds like you're in favor of equal taxation regardless of marital or parental status. Ok, that makes sense from a tax burden fairness standpoint. What would you say to the argument that people that have kids are contributing to society by producing future taxpayers in addition to paying taxes (which would be a net positive assuming a people in aggregate contribute more than they draw from society)?

I disagree with a couple of your views on marriage: 1) that they inevitably break down. This is true in many cases, but not all. Nearly all marriages I've known (anecdote alert) were long, happy, and faithful. I understand the divorce rate is high (50% in the US?), but this failure is simply not inevitable. 2) that the family unit is artifical. I think both the nuclear family and tribal units are natural, based on the psychological effects of sexual coupling and parenthood. I'd be curious to see your references on this idea. Isn't there some sort of marriage-like institution in every human culture? The number of wives or other details may vary, but it seems that something like the family unit is a constant across the human experience, which would indicate it's not artificial.

Unless I'm missing your point, you're not for gay marriage, but for the removal of any sort of incentive or recognition for marriage and parenthood at all. So my question still stands. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Excellent questions that are central to this issue and somehow don't seem to get addressed often. I'm not sure I've heard an argument in favor of gay marriage from the perspective of marriage's role in society and government's role in recognizing marriage. It's possible it's out there, so if someone's got a link I'd like to read it, because all I hear seems to be "they want to do it so it's their right" which doesn't necessarily follow.

I have heard many conservatives suggest the government just shouldn't be involved in marriage at all; it should be strictly a private affair, which obviously would leave everyone free to accept gay marriage (or any other form) or not.

(Same AC) Correction - I read most of the patent. I skimmed the detailed technical part at the end that explained the details.

Terrible! Which is why it's so frustrating that even when Congress has the lowest approval ratings ever, nothing much changes. Although technically, the system works: people have the government they repeatedly chose.

You've come this far without ever encountering a non-religious argument against gay marriage? I'll assume you're not trolling and take your claim at face value.

There are lots of arguments, and a google search for "secular opposition to gay marriage" will yield many results. The short answer is that the state has no compelling interest in sanctioning gay marriage, it affects society in a significant way, and since I'm a part of society, it affects me. I encourage you to read this column. It lays out the arguments in a clear and concise way.

Gay marriage is totally unrelated to suffrage, and comparisons to interracial marriage don't quite work (for the reasons laid out in the above article).

And let me just say as a religious person, "God says so" is NEVER a sufficient reason for legislation.

Not refrain from objecting to his actions, refrain from objecting to his being a CEO of a tech company. All these objections about his views and how they relate to his qualification as CEO would be completely valid if he were a CEO of an organization that advocated for gay rights, but there's nothing inherent in what Mozilla does that necessitates a different viewpoint. It's like saying "someone who believes in Palestinian statehood shouldn't be CEO of a tech company that employs Jews" or "someone who opposes abortion shouldn't be CEO of a tech company that employs women who may have had an abortion." My point is it's not relevant.

It should be obvious to everyone that the supporters of Prop 8 don't see it this way, because they don't see "gay marriage" as the same thing as "marriage". They don't recognize it as a form of an existing right, but a different and newly claimed right, that the state shouldn't recognize due to the nature of marriage and the state's role in protecting and promoting that institution. The crux of the issue is whether it's a right or not, and the side advocating for it hasn't demonstrated to the other side why it is. People that supported Prop 8 aren't necessarily bigots, homophobes, or any of the nasty labels that get tossed around so much (although I'm sure many of them were).

For an analogy to interracial marriage: if you believe it's bad because members of race X are inherently of less worth, then you're racist. If you believe it's bad because for some other reason it would be detrimental to society, you aren't necessarily racist. In the case of interracial marriage, though, there's nothing about race that's relevant to the institution, even as it was practiced in segregated regions. Sex, however, is relevant to marriage; this is why I think the comparisons to the civil rights crusade of the '60s are not apt - serious opponents of Prop 8 aren't really claiming that gay people are "less human." I'm a little too young to have been around during the civil rights era, though, so if anyone knows of arguments made during that time that are more applicable I'm open to correction.

It shouldn't seem more hostile - if someone has an opinion on how some aspect of society should function, I expect them to advocate publicly for that position, be they the Klan, neo-Nazis, NAMBLA, Christians, the "gay lobby", or anyone else. It's not somehow "worse" for someone to try to enact the social changes they think should be made.