I do the turkey as well, and I'm still constantly amazed how easy it is to get right.

This year we have so many people coming over that we're going to need two birds (My work graciously provides a Thanksgiving turkey to its employees. I also lucked out that a coworker of mine didn't want his, and gave it to me. So two free turkeys.) One's getting roasted Alton Brown style. The other is getting butterflied and grilled.

I'm one of the people out at I/O that was given one, but I've only taken it out of the box to look at it so far (too many sessions, not enough time).

To go along with the expensive design part. The device has a lot of mass. It was designed to sit on a table, and be interacted with locally. The top half of the Q spins (I believe as a volume control, but I have not had a chance to set it up yet) If you look at the breakdown diagrams they briefly show in the introduction video - there's also a complex set of components inside of the device. So that increases the assembly cost as well.

It's not meant to be a simple video player, nor just a slave to the TV. Hooking it up to a TV is technically optional.

I'm glad it is being produced in the US - we need more companies demanding device manufacture and assembly in the US - it will only help drive down the US assembly costs due to volume. We used to (10 years ago) do a LOT of assembly in the US for all sorts of devices, but the economic downturns drove a lot of assembly over seas (increasing some costs, decreasing others).

I got married on the 29th, just had my "first" anniversary. We celebrate every year around the day, and treat the ones on the 29th like most people treat their divisible by 5-year anniversary. So every 4 years (therefore more often than most people) we plan something extra-special instead of the usual way we celebrate.

I still have yet to see any long-term annoyance.

You likely will want to install PostGIS http://postgis.refractions.net/ as well. PostgreSQL can do simple geometry and distances and will get you by with some simple functions. PostGIS adds on the real GIS functions and calculations.

He's not trying to complete on price w/ Microsoft; So there's nothing stopping him from buying an official controller for each one he builds to get the interface hardware. It just becomes part of the BOM cost.

Then he just has to replace the buttons and joysticks with ones that work for his end-users.

The best part about that team revealing this, was hearing NPR / CNN / BBC and others say Goatse in their broadcasts. Priceless!