what works better for REAL PEOPLE. Which is not the technical elite.

Technical elite != homo sapien? No need to dehumanize the technical elite.

Still getting updates for my iPhone 4, bought at launch... or heck even my 3Gs.

If historical data is any guide, then 7 years from now I'll still be getting OS updates for the $250 laptop I buy today, but not for the $250 tablet I buy today. It hasn't even been 7 years since the iPhone 3G was released and it no longer gets updates.

That says more about Android than it does the comparison of modern mobile devices to PCs.

Last time I checked, Android tablets were modern mobile devices.

It's also obviously superior to use touch over tiny physical keyboards, or there would still be a lot of devices sold with tiny physical keyboards instead of virtually none.

Somewhat straw man. Virtual keyboard taking up half of my screen sucks. Trying to type on that little thing with my big fingers sucks. When I need to take notes with the tablet I carry a laptop keyboard size BT keyboard.

You don't need a mouse with touch.

Trying to scroll a web page with my finger without touching any of the links on the page (eg. Facebook) sucks. I gave my wife my old tablet and even she found it frustrating to use with her little fingers.

There are a lot of laptops cheaper than the latest smart phones and 18 months after you buy a laptop you can still get updates for the OS.

The first tablet I owned got ICS and will never be updated further by the manufacturer nor is it supported by any of the alternate firmwares.

Bullshit! I know a guy whose job is to audit the factories in India that US drug manufacturers have outsourced drug production to. You think all US non-generic prescription drugs are manufactured in the US? You are wrong!

The best advice I have for anyone as they get older in this business is to network and build lasting relationships. Be the guy who gets things done with few defects. Be the guy who isn't afraid of new tech. Be the guy who your managers depend on and then follow those managers to new opportunities as necessary and if possible.

I've had managers tell me, "If these people are ever stupid enough to lay you off, give me a call.", which is exactly what I did when I did finally get laid off as the last engineering jobs on the product I used to work on went to China.

I have been working remotely, non-contract, full time for 18 years. If I didn't have manager connections who knew me to be very productive working from home, I expect I would have had a hard time finding another remote position. There are some companies that prefer remotes though, so that is one place to look.

I have been doing commercial software development though, not internal IT, so YMMV.

Sounds like my last job. There are always going to be morons running companies into the ground like that. Don't dwell on it. It's not about you. The Chinese who took over the market leading software product that I worked on screwed it up so badly that people I still know at the company kept telling me that the managers were talking about trying to get me back for months. I'm sure there are good Chinese engineers but not these particular guys.

The best advice I have for anyone as they get older in this business is to network and build lasting relationships. Be the guy who gets things done with few defects. Be the guy who isn't afraid of new tech. Be the guy who your managers depend on and then follow those managers to new opportunities as necessary and if possible.

I've had managers tell me, "If these people are ever stupid enough to lay you off, give me a call.", which is exactly what I did when I did finally get laid off as the last engineering jobs on the product went to China.

I'm in my mid-40s and I've been working remotely full time, non-contract for 18 years doing everything from C++ Windows apps to server side Java and SQL to MongoDB.

The Russians have been doing this for a while:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phage_therapy

He semi-retired about 2 years ago. After that particular incident he left that company and now he's doing part time consulting with another company for people he knows who aren't jerks and who value his skills. I expect everything he worked on is intellectual property of his old company so he probably can't discuss the details. He's pushing 70 at this point, but he loves what he does and is very good at it.

Yeah, it does make me hopeful in that from what he says there are new antibiotics out there in the lab, but companies are just sitting on them because of lack of ROI. I'm not sure how much of that kind of research is happening in academia. Hopefully at some point they will get it to market.

The market is definitely causing this. True story:

I know a guy who is a MD and worked most of his career as an antibiotic researcher. His team came up with a new antibiotic that killed everything they tested it on. When he brought the research to the VPs and the CEO, the CEO told him, "You expect me to spend millions of dollars to bring this drug to market only to have the damn doctors keep it in reserve so they can use it as a last resort?"

So, yeah this is a market epic fail. ROI > life. To the morons running these companies, the equation is as simple as that.

Well now you've changed the requirements. Your original statement only mentioned serving from a NAS not specifically about serving from a NAS via SMB. Serving from NAS over HTTP or Plex works fine for me.

SMB on the NAS is also a, "remote agent off of the player unit", if you want to get technical about it. Turning on HTTP on the NAS (at least for the one I am using) was no easier or harder than turning on SMB. There is no server piece to Roxsbox as there is for Plex except a simple httpd.

But yeah, there is no built in client for either SMB or HTTP. Adding one for HTTP isn't rocket science but evidently it bothers you more than it bothers me. To each his own.

Those are nice, but the problem I have with all Android based solutions is that there is no free Hulu. If it's free on my laptop it should be free on my tablet and STB.

So much for that... This one is broken now too....

This solution bypasses Google's Chromecast SDK entirely.

Plex can run on several brands of NAS.

Either that or use Roxsbox on Roku and serve it from your NAS using http.

My NAS can do both and I stream local content on Roku all the time.

percentages of abuse amongst priests is disturbingly high compared to other professions

Source? Studies? Numbers?

It's actually lower from what I've read. Kids are much more likely to be abused by family members or teachers.