Even simpler, use a silver Sharpie.

But, I have two other issues:

- I have devices I am no longer using because the P/S failed and I cannot get replacements. Some have odd currents/voltages, and are impossible to find. If the device is not being made any more, it's really hard to find replacements.

- Too many wall warts. A universal Power Supply with configurable tips & voltage/current that could power multiple devices would simplify many things.

I had a WRV54G, which I always hoped would get DD-WRT support. There were some attempts, but it never really got off the ground. The WRV54G had hardware IPSec support in the Broadcom chip it was based on.

I've never located another home wifi router which supported Linux and some form of VPN. IPSec or SSL-VPN would be nice. Anyone know of devices that can do this?

Netflix seems to count streaming views similarly to physical disc rentals, so they de-prioritize your disc rentals the same way as many have reported for people who run through a lot of discs.

I picked up a Samsung Blu-Ray player which supports Netflix streaming. I found the selection to be fairly poor, but because of the easy access I ended up sampling a lot of material. After digging a lot, I turned up some good options, like some Showtime series, and PBS Frontline episodes.

During this time I had actually decreased the amount of the Netflix mailed discs I was watching. Partly due to having the streaming, but mostly just form being too busy. Despite the low usage of discs, all the top 15 movies in my queue were in the "Very Long Wait" state. Comparing my queue to co-workers queues showed that theirs did not have anywhere near the same delays shown.

I've completely stopped using streaming. It's okay as filler material if it's a "free" service. But, it's definitely not worth it if it means no access to decent movies.

If iTMS gets a little better selection, I will gladly stop my Netflix subscription. I'm sick of the gaming of the queue.

"Magic" is a stupid way of phrasing it. But, all he's really saying is that a touch interface is a fundamentally different way of interacting with the device. Apple is hoping that this will be enough to get it to catch on.

I am among the skeptics on whether it will really be a better way to work. I think it will be a fantastic device for frequent travelers (not as a laptop replacement, but as a compact email/music/video/browsing/etc. device for use while in-transit). But, I don't know if it will be very useful outside that realm. My laptop serves me fine in most cases, my phone is great for others, I'm not sure the gap between is big enough to need filling.

But, I am totally onboard with Apple on the iPad being better than netbooks. These have always seemed like junk to me. Other than being cheap, they don't offer much. Poor performance, poor screen, poor keyboard. No thanks. If I want a laptop, I'll stick with a real laptop.

This is exactly right. When I made the switch from Linux to Mac OS X on my laptop I started tracking a bunch of apple-related feeds to keep up on new Apps, etc. I quickly removed Roughlydrafted from the list, because they are clearly Apple apologists.

I like Apple, OS X, and the iPhone as much as the next guy. But, Apple is far from perfect.. they make bad calls, keep some parts of their products too closed, and like any other company need to make continuous improvements. But, what you get from roughlydrafted is an uncritical explanation for why Apple's decision is right, and a dismissal of any critics as apple haters.

So, it's not worth reading. Just assume anything from that site affirms the correctness of any Apple decision (e.g. the initially closed iPhone... of course 3rd party developers can't be trusted to make apps for a phone platform).

Of course, I am completely fine with no flash on the iPhone/iPad. Flash is a resource hog on my MacBook Pro, and I generally use flashblock to limit that and the annoying flash ads.

Come on.. an advertisement for a commercial codec to use in a Windows system / application?

How did this make it as a story?

I could maybe understand a story about doing this on an OSS system. But, that would not have been news because many of us have been doing that for years.

When the OSS Nvidia or Radeon driver gets full VDPAU support, that merits a front page story.

I'm not a gamer, so the 3D features are not important to me. I am an HTPC user, and ATI has always been a non-factor in that realm. So, I haven't paid any attention to their releases for the last few years.

Has there been any change in video acceleration in Linux with AMD? Do they have any support for XvMC, VDPAU, or anything else usable in Linux?

I'm in the same position.. I tried XBMC / Plex / Boxee as "the one true frontend". But, had no end of problems getting MythTV working with it. I got tantalizing glimpses of it working well, but it never stayed working.

I also have been using a Mac Mini as an HTPC that can do most everything I need between Front Row / iTunes, Plex/Boxee, and MythTV Frontend. It works passably well. But, I ran into too many oddities with the Mac OS X version of MythFrontend (others claim it's rock solid for them, so YMMV).

I ended up using an HDMI switching tuner and a Harmony remote, to easily switch back and forth between my Mac HTPC which does a lot of things, and a small Linux box as my MythTV frontend. I used an Acer AspireRevo running MythBuntu for the myth frontend. It has an nvidia GPU which supports VDPAU video acceleration. Video playback is rock solid, but I don't do anything else on that box (I made a couple attempts to get XBMC running on it, but it didn't go well).

A friend of mine installed Linux on his parents computer, and put an end to the corruption/rebuild cycle. Of course, I think a large part of why this helped was that his parents only understood how to do the basics - read e-mail, browse the web, play music. They couldn't install new apps.

For my parents, I didn't think they would put up with "lock down" mode. So, I set them up with an iMac, and it has been great so far. I can ssh in to the system and look around, like Linux. That helps some support issues. For others, remote desktop works well. But, I have not had to deal with any malware, system corruption, or complete re-installs since moving to Mac. (Why that is, I don't really care.. maybe someday we'll have virus issues. For now, all I care is that it is not a problem)

> Wow, you MS apologists just don't quit, do you?
>
>Here's the thing: If it was exclusive then what caused the exclusivity to change?

It's typically specified in the contract. MS probably demanded a period of exclusivity in exchange for the development/integration/distribution of making Netflix streaming available to their huge installed base of users. Netflix wanted to retain the flexibility to partner with anyone they wanted. So, they negotiated a mutually agreeable term of exclusivity.

This is very common in the software industry.

For those of us that use Windows in a VM on our primary Linux or Mac OS X desktop, what is the best OS?

For a long time, I stuck with my good old Win2K VM. But, too many apps were not supported on Win2K, so I moved to XP.

There was clearly no reason to go to Vista from XP. But, how about now with Win7? Any advantages to Win7 for basic VM use, office apps & IT tools?

This looks like a great device to replace my old WRV54G router (which has hardware IPSec support). When I bought the WRV54G, there were a couple projects to create an linux firmware, but none ever panned out.

Do any of the OSS firmware options support IPSec? I know it won't be fast on an embedded processor like are in these routers. But, it should be okay for a home router.

They declared bankruptcy.. the company failed and went into bankruptcy protection in an attempt to salvage something.

Their shareholders (owners) lost billions of dollars, and the GM of old is no more.

Yes, it's important to recognize the responsibilities of old-GM that are not being addressed now that they are gone. But, this should not be surprising, and it's not that unusual either.

The functional equivalent of the smartphone remote control has existed for a decade or so. The Phiips Pronto remote control is a touch screen, fully programmable, completely optimize for its job, remote control. It had a GUI editor for configuring the screens, built-in IR emitter, etc.

And yet, other universal remotes have been created and flourished. The touch screen sucks for remote controls. You don't want to look at the device to figure out the context and button layout every time you use it. You just want to feel the button layout and hit what you need.

I replaced me Pronto with a cheap Radio Shack remote control (and some hack-ish software to reprogram it). You can get nearly the same effect for a bit more $$ with the Harmony remote. Although, I think the Radio Shack "JP1" remotes are even better when programmed well - minimal buttons completely optimized for the user's environment.

Virtualization gives an easier way to accomplish this (with the caveat of needing a platform able to host the virtualized platform).

You can easily snapshot systems, and have an OS image for each x years rather than a complete new platform each time. Doing this today, you could easily produce snapshots from DOS days up until current systems.

VMware would be easier to create all this with. But, open source Xen would probably be the better choice to ensure future availability.