You have pretty much described a Roku box. I have it and it does a lot of that; there are currently a few different home media solutions. The one I am using is only in its development stage, and you have to know how to encode stuff to work on it. Once you figure that out, it's a really nice piece.

The government is not an individual, so I am not sure how its "right to privacy" can exactly be compared to an individual's right to privacy (in your example, his finances).

The government is built on the backs of individual citizens who have created, contribute to, and participate in its existence. If these citizens are not allowed to have all of the available information, they can't make informed choices about their government.

Everyone seems to be missing the picture. 100% on Demand, all the time, is what we're shooting for here. DVR-- okay, but that's just the stepping stone for On Demand All the Time.

I canceled my Comcast (er, Xfinity??) subscription 7 months ago and have not looked back. In fact, I watch more "TV" than ever through my Roku box, simply because I have many more choices at my fingertips 24/7. Not to mention that I'm paying 50% of the price (yes, including my bandwidth costs).

Of note is that I have an 11-year-old daughter, whose initial groans about ditching cable tv have been replaced by the complete delight she experiences discovering that her favorite movies and tv shows are already available on Netflix; and she is also discovering classic TV such as the Adams family and Ren & Stimpy and lots of other great stuff.

With this Hulu offering (which will only get better over time), the existing "gaps" in programming will become completely irrelevant (although they are already irrelevant to me personally). Not to mention Pandora Radio, which is available free through the Roku, out of the box.

PLUS-- I have a little USB ATSC tuner with DVR software, which records my network shows off of the air in full HD including Dolby 5.1 soundtrack. Remember that digital switchover? It worked! And the picture is way better than what my Comcast picture was.

Currently, this costs me 75 USD/month, which includes a kick-ass 4G internet service with unlimited bandwidth usage, VOIP, Netflix, and now Hulu. Considering that I was paying twice that much with Comcast, without any pay channels nor HD (which I'm not even sure why they were trying to charge me extra for) nor DVR, I'm more than satisfied.

Just thought I'd weigh in with my experience. I'm not a typical TV-addicted American; or, I didn't used to be.

As a support guy, it has recently occurred to me that the Bible is sort of like a tech manual. The stuff in there probably has some value, but the writer doesn't really understand what he is writing about, and the reader is stupid.

Also, this is the information that traditionally communications consultants spend hours gathering through interviews and focus groups.

I think Josh Holloway (Sawyer, of Lost fame) would be pretty good.

I think this argument, which is relatively cogent, boils down to "funding has to come from somewhere," and that makes some sense. I think what this represents, though, is the intersection between ethics and capitalism. A company like Pepsi, perhaps indirectly, gains editorial clout by contributing cash to the site.

Therefore, it becomes a strong possibility that, even if the "Pepsi Blog" were to be scientifically accurate, independent blog articles on the site that tout the harmful effects of PepsiCo's products on the human body are unlikely to gain their due attention-- or worse, might be censored. After all, PepsiCo has a major interest in keeping the bar to gaining public awareness of issues that conflict with their profit interest high.

I have recently begun a quest for better health after suffering from stomach pain and being overweight. I was amazed at how ignorant I was even in the simple area of knowing what a proper "portion" of food is. The problem is that large junk food brands have the ability to flood us with imagery of how great their stuff tastes, on a scale that is quite disproportionate to what is actually nutritionally healthy to help maintain proper body weight.

At the end of the day, the growth of PepsiCo and other junk food companies rests on the notion of our gluttony; how they can convince us to consume more and more of their products. This is in direct conflict with what is healthy for the human body. Without an equal awareness of what an actual human diet should consist of, it feels unethical that PepsiCo would be in a position to further suppress information that could benefit many people.

IOW, War = Peace.

Riiiiight.

I don't think Twitter will have the longevity of the Internet, though. Twitter is a fad, and all of today's self-important tweeters will eventually get sick of it and it will simply turn into another outlet for advertisers to blast us with sales pitches.

Regardless of whether people are *actually* interchangeable or not, turnover is a fact of life in the real world. Some forethought regarding how to capture and maintain documentation is crucial, along with the understanding that knowledge is a by-product of everything that you do.

As such, following a knowledge management procedure should be part of everyone's job description. If organized and maintained properly, a knowledge base should present many ways of drilling down into the information, so that not knowing which key word to search for isn't the end of the world.

Why is it that we can find little obscure facts on the Internet so easily, yet can't find significant facts within a finite data set within our respective companies? It seems that people accept the meme that there's no such thing as a good knowledge management system and, therefore, it's not worth spending any time (money) on implementing one. So, people stockpile information in their little wikis, which die because people eventually get sick of maintaining them.

Phew! I thought that you were going to say that you've had enough of the stereotype that Canadians say "eh" and pronounce words like "about" funny ("aboot").

The sum total of replies here seem to convey a sort of offense that folks have taken to the notion that games are not art, without any real discussion of what seem to be his two central arguments:

1. "Games and Art are mutually exclusive things, by definition." That seems reasonable to me, for simplicity's sake. As for an in-depth philosophical discussion, maybe you could dissect this point and refute it.

2. "No game creators are held up with the same reverence as great poets or painters." I'm not sure how one would refute this fact. The only thing I would say is that lots of time seems to pass before anyone's work is typically appreciated as "great."

I pose one simple question: Who cares?

I get suspicious when people are so offended by semantics. I think many of us have matured to a degree that we view the label "nerd" as either a badge of honor, or as an inaccurate label of someone who is simply different. (No, I'm not trying to trivialize the issue of bullying by children, I'm speaking from the point of view of an adult who isn't going through that stuff.) It's totally subjective, and kind of silly to waste a lot of time or thought on, IMHO.

Enjoy your games. Be amazed. Immerse yourself. Does the possibility that what you are experiencing is not "art" detract from your experience? I hope not!

It depends on what is exposed.

Poopbuntu.

>> i have no problem with someone saying the believe in something because they choose to - that's what faith is.

First of all, I agree with your overall sentiments. However, I think that the attitude conveyed in the above quote is actually a problem-- essentially, you are saying that you don't have a problem with people believing things that are contrary to things dictated by logic and things that the human race continues to discover through science.

This IS a problem; brainwashing people should NOT be required to cause people to believe something. FACTS and LOGIC should be enough. Folks who are immune to FACTS and LOGIC are, at best, stupid people to stay away from; at worst, they are gun-wielding fundamentalists whose world-view gives them the right to kill you, an infidel.

And actually, I don't even believe that anyone "chooses" to have faith. I believe that there is an ecosystem in which children are brainwashed into believing dogma, and into thinking that it's their job to spread that dogma. Further, lots of adult "rehabilitation programs" exist that pray on people at low points of their lives who may be criminals or drug addicts; instead of giving them a healthy framework to think about the choices they make, they instead teach these folks to submit their will to God.

Is faith bad? I'm not sure. But I think that when we speak of it, we should think beyond the positive effects it has on a brainwashed automaton and ask whether or not it's really doing us, society, in this day and age, any good? When thinking about this question, also consider that "faith" is mutually exclusive to the concept of "morality," which seems to be something that the "faithful" believe they have a monopoly on.