And let me guess, you probably also learned to read by recognition and not phonics, right?

Your experience seems similar to mine, and that's what I have found the key difference is. I learned to read from being read to every night, and following along. When I was 2 I was reading the books back, and my family just assumed I had memorized them. Then somewhere around turning 3 they realized that I could already read - it started with picking out a sign or text and then finally someone shoved a newspaper in front of me, and while I couldn't read the entire thing I was able to read quite a bit. I was reading "chapter books" by 5. And I've been reading - a lot - ever since then, even if the format has changed (obviously a lot more online/tablet than print these days).

I think the folks saying "you are SKIMMING" may be on to something, but not what they think. Not the quality of reading, but the actual method. Looking at it (pun intended), I would assume that my "normal" reading is what some folks would refer to as "skimming". I don't sit and read every single word, I look at groups of words and see them as one. Now, I still go over all the text - skimming for me is when I'm only looking at a few sentences a paragraph.

I really started to understand this fundamental difference in how folks read when I got out into the professional workplace. Lots of very smart, clever folks (and many not so smart and clever), have very little ability to read anything longer than a few sentences and understand it. Everything has to be bullet points and brief, summary headers - this post would never work there, LOL. And a lot of these folks are a lot more traditionally educated than I am. Of course, this is a separate issue and has many factors, but just watching folks read something that is sent out and it takes them four times as long to read it and I still get more out of it than they do was actually the first time I realized that they simply read differently than I did.

Oh please. Or are you being obtuse on purpose?

Hulu is a company created to serve the US market. They have no responsibility to open up open up in every damn country worldwide. There are good reasons they don't - and why no one else really does, either. Netflix is just at snail speed in its addition of international support, even with all the cash and influence they have these days (and often movie licensing is easier with one clear owner than television where rights can be owned by all number of folks, many of whom have no collective bargaining, official or not).

The reason for this is two-fold. One, because licensing agreements are so complex and extremely territorial (one studio might handle US distribution, another studio, even a competitor, may have international rights), you would pretty much literally have to start from scratch for each country. Netflix isn't going one by one in Europe because it's fun, it's because it's like starting up a new licensing business each time. Screw the tech, it's the licensing agreements and making that profitable to purchase for that country to make a service that is the issue.

Two, and just as important, is the fact that the majority of the world who has commercial broadband have caps. Not all, but a good percentage. So while streaming services are all the rage in the US because of our mostly AYCE, one-flat-rate broadband, it's never going to be as popular in other markets, so streaming services have to somehow get licensing agreements for an entire library, and somehow do it cheap enough to make it worth doing business at all with what is always going to be a limited audience to begin with, in each new country.

In the US, we are in the middle of the Golden Age of Streaming - GAS - which, eventually, one runs out of - as we will our streaming fetish. ISP's are just waiting to pull the caps down in the US, they already have been testing it. Once they do, either streaming will die off, or, sweetheart deals get made with Netflix/Hulu/Amazon/etc. with the ISP's, keeping their content out of the caps, which means those services are going to get much much more expensive (no more $7.99 a month, think like ten times that...just like the cable bill you thought was so smart in getting rid of to become a streamer - they are gonna make you pay one way, or another).

As to the story itself, I'm sorry, if you are into "living off the grid" or whatever, and feel you can't view Hulu without a VPN, or you are in hiding and cannot use anything but a VPN, you probably have more important things to worry about than catching up with Bones on Hulu. To those mad about them being evil to non-US residents, blame Hollywood and the mess they have made of rights issues - even more accurately, all the unions and executives that conspire to make all that stuff cost so damn much to make in the first place which make the rights so valuable to control tightly. Does it really take 300 million dollars to make a film? No more than an aspirin costs the hospital $35 or a toilet seat costs the Army $575.

I can't say I applaud Hulu, but I can say I don't blame them. They are a good service and to stay that way, they have to stay within the boundaries of the legal agreements they have made in order to exist. All this "reasonable" vs "unreasonable" is irrelevant - it was a smart business move for them in many ways, even though some folks just won't get that because they are irritated their micro-hack no longer works.

I didn't claim to be a power user, but I would consider myself above average as far as normal computer using folks. I don't write programs, but it can write advanced Excel macros. I've never built a PC from scratch but I've torn down my laptop all the way and can upgrade anything. I'm an advanced user but no expert. And I'll be fully honest - never even knew alternate UI's existed until folks started posting about them here in regards to Win8. I never needed to know because I was always able to customize Windows to do what I wanted. So, if I have never heard of replacement UIs, chances are, most non-IT users don't, either.

A lot of times I just am working with a mouse and don't have hands on a keyboard. I have a Razer Naga with 19 buttons I often don't need the keyboard. Just clicking the x was so much easier than having to click and drag down to emulate touch. Yes, we are talking about minor effort, but when you do it dozens of times a day it's just annoying. And that's just the start.

It's just absurd to have to use a mouse to emulate touch which was designed to emulate a mouse to begin with. It is like translating something from French to English and then translating it back to French. WTF is the point.

I agree. I lived with Win8 for a month or so but just got so annoyed having to slide my mouse around just to close a window and having to fight just to get to the desktop. I gave it a good try, but then I just booted the whole thing and went back to Win7.

It wasn't a lack of willingness to adapt, it was because the interface clearly was not aimed at traditional desktop use. And I have no desire whatsoever for a touch screen - one at the size I would need is not only prohibitively expensive for what I'd wish to pay, but I'm not going to reach up constantly when it's much more efficient to just use a mouse and keyboard in most cases. I can do everything more quickly (why pinch to resize when my mouse wheel does it perfectly, etc.) and I don't have to relearn how to do basic tasks.

I also gave the whole "tiles" thing a try - but again, just organizing it was a chore, I don't have the need for live widgets (and, as others point out, they could work just as easily from the desktop anyway), and because of how many apps I use regularly, the thing was unwieldy to scroll across. I also am apt to add an app to try it out, and delete it if it wasn't what I really needed (so hard to tell just from reviews these days, particularly with video manipulation software), and it always seemed to leave various junk files laying around which I then had to go in to manually remove (text readmes, etc). It was a major PITA.

If someone who has been using Windows for 20 years daily had as much issue as I did, someone who folks routinely ask me to "fix" their computers (get rid of errant toolbars, etc.) - there was no hope for the average user. Nothing was intuitive about it. Even if someone just wanted to click on simple apps or links to use them (say, my mom who goes to like 3 websites, uses like 3 or 4 apps, and that's about it) she would have never been able to set that up herself.

I still have my Win8 Upgrade copy, at some point I'm sure some afternoon in the next few months I'll be watching a TV marathon and decide to give it a whirl - but I'll be fully mirroring my current Win7 set-up so I can go back if they've just put lipstick on a pig. Hopefully they have addressed the usability issues - all that crap they added would be great options for someone who wants to use a touch-interface exclusively, but all it felt like to me was using Windows through a space suit underwater...

I was with you at the beginning, until you turned it into an "anti-geek" rant. It's too bad you derailed yourself or you may have gotten a point across - but since you didn't, your post will fall into moderated obscurity.

The part I agree with is that I personally am not concerned whatsoever with the metadata. At all. And the only reason you see most of the media coverage is because folks don't understand what metadata is. If you polled the public right now you would largely find them believing the government is secretly recording and archiving all of our actual phone calls. They aren't.

I know I'll get lectured about "slippery slopes" by saying this, and get down modded, but hey, my karma can take it. I couldn't give a flying fuck if they have a list of my phone calls - my cell phone company already does and it wouldn't be that difficult to get anyway if the government actually cared.

I don't call people on watch lists, I don't call any known criminals, and if they want to see that I called my dentist or my mom last week, yay for them. That's all they will find.

That's yet another reason I don't give a shit - who the hell makes all kinds of calls these days, anyway, except for business if you must. I text everyone I know - and just like when I type data into any electronic device, I am fully well aware it is not secure from the government or anyone else really should someone be curious. So if they want to see me kvetching about Game of Thrones or read me talking to a friend about a restaurant to have dinner at, again - go for it. I'm flattered anyone would care.

I know the groupthink here is to distrust and be wary of everything that has anything to do with the government, but I think there are much worse aspects to be worried about while folks are freaking out over this. If I was a conspiracy theorist (which I on the rare occasion may be) I'd say the whole thing was a big distraction to keep us occupied while the real bad stuff is happening.

In any case, after this hit and I read about it for myself, instead of listening to what folks were saying about it and hyping it up to be, and saw that it was just metadata, I haven't thought about it since until now.

Oh shit...I gotta go. Guys in dark suits and expensive shades just showed up in black SUV's in my driveway. They found out that I missed my dentist appointment and forgot to cancel beforehand!!! Damn you metadata, damn you!!!

Oh, and to whomever is abusing mid points by calling this "off topic" - may your karma points reflect your idiocy. Must be a Jobs-clit-licker.

Netflix was not included in the search because Netflix asked not to be. This was made in an official statement by Amazon.

I own one, and this is the best thing since sliced bread. It is so incredibly fast your head spins - every other device I have tried is so slow and wonky - the power of this machine is incredible. I unhooked my AppleTV and stuck it on eBay because thankfully none of my content is iTunes and stuck forever in Apple's walled garden.

The only caveat is that at launch (a whole two days ago) there are a few services notably missing - HBO GO and Vudu. However, unlike Apple it doesn't take an act of congress to get a new service, I have no doubt apps will be available for those services and many others very quickly. I understand if folks may wait for that to happen, but I have no doubts it will, and soon. For now, I'll use XBOX 360 for HBO GO and my Blu-ray player for Vudu, but the second the apps become available for Fire I'll jump ship so quick, well, you'll think I'm on fire.

The speed of this device just blows my mind, even though I have a bunch of devices that stream various media I always assumed that unless I hooked a full-on computer to my TV I'd have the same endless loading, just to get an app up and running so I could watch something. In a few months once the App Store for it is booming, I cannot see anyone choosing a different brand of device unless they are forced to because they lacked the foresight not to tie their media libraries into one companies devices.

Once you have seen a Fire in action, you will be blown away.

Have you missed the project where an independent entity is doing just that? They were taking applications last year. www.mars-one.com

Hell yeah. It's OK to send 18 year old barely-not-children-anymore to the hell hole Middle East with a pretty decent chance of dying - and usually for something shitty like a roadside bomb on top of it - not even in direct combat defending something - just in hopes that if they survive their education will be paid for - yet it's not ethical for someone to go to freaking Mars voluntarily if they want?

To quote you - Fuck. That. Hard.

Our priorities here are beyond fucked - but you only have to look at the war budget vs the NASA budget to know that. I'm sure someone has the statistics, but I'm pretty sure that what we spend on NASA in a year is equivalent to what - hours, days in war funding for the Middle East?

I agree. Hell, you can just slap a stick-on mirror over a broken one, in a pinch. I was driving cross-country once and needed to do just that - it got me through that trip until I was able to replace it. If the camera/connector/cable/display goes wonky it would have been a much more time consuming, expensive, and bitchly process, even just to figure out what stopped working.

There is also something to be said about feeling disconnected - no pun intended - that you get in video but you don't get in mirrors. You are looking at a direct reflection of reality with your own eyes as opposed to a digital image - it may not be measurable in metrics but your eyes are still seeing the reflection (insert "objects are closer than they appear" message, LOL) versus a digital eye that you then interpret. I just think disconnecting ourselves further from what is outside of our cars is probably not the best idea.

All that said, unless I'm in bumper to bumper street traffic, I don't really use side mirrors much to begin with (yet by all accounts I think I am a pretty decent driver - I was in one accident when I was 16 (20 years ago) and I've driven well over 700K miles since then - I have no "points on my license" etc., and I'm usually complemented - I think it comes from the combo of my mom racing cars and my dad being a police officer, LOL). Some driving instructors will tell you to use the mirrors, but old school ones tell you to actually turn your head when you can (especially on the highway when nothing is straight in front of you). It's just a second (less time than if you futz with some control) and then you actually see with your own eyes. It may not work for everyone, but it's worked for me - and removing myself twice from that by not only not using the mirrors, but a video camera, just seems silly for me, at least.

Hey, at least it's better than digging-our-heels-in-screw-the-users-we-know-better Apple. I applaud them for making this change, it may actually get me to reinstall Windows 8. I don't have a touch screen on my desk, and I don't want one (who wants to constantly be reaching up instead of tiny mouse flicks), but at least Microsoft has the balls to admit they were wrong and are undoing it. Unlike Apple, which fucks up your interface, everything about how you use their OS (iOS7 = I'll never purchase another Apple phone again) and tells you to like it or to fuck off, no you can't choose the background of your notepad because we know better than you what you should like.

When I think back to 20 years ago when Microsoft was the big bad and Apple was the almost "holistic" alternative, it's amazing how a few extremely successful products can change the perception of a company. Steve Jobs died a lonely but very very rich asshole who folks struggled to say a kind word about beyond his "design expertise" (did you hear one person say anything actually NICE about him? I actually sought out articles about his death looking and I couldn't find a single one) and here is DR. Evil himself Bill gates running around the globe giving away billions of dollars and actually improving the quality of life for people all over the planet, not just giving a gee-cool-slickly designed device or two to middle-to-upperclass folks who have the luxury of being able to afford a smartphone and it's service so we can feed our endless consumption appetite.

Who ever knew Microsoft would end up being the "good" sibling.

If you mean "inevitable wave of the future", as in "3-D movies in the home is the inevitable wave of the future" or "nuclear power is the inevitable wave of the future"...well, all I can say is, good luck with that, LOL.

That's also the conceit Star Trek uses, although the entire ship doesn't spin, just a plate within it. Like many space travel issues, we know how to do it, or at least have a reasonable idea of how it can be done, but it's difficult because even if we had the funding, the only ways in which things are possible would have the side effect of turning us into mush/killing us in the process. It's force fields that are the ingredient we really need to make a lot of this stuff work around our fragile human bodies.