Wish I had upvotes - but instead I'll reply. The TV industry globally is in dire need of this kind of thing. The impossibly slow menu systems of most SAT/Cable TV systems are bad enough. Then you look at the awful impenetrable remotes with buttons everywhere. I can easily imagine a company like Apple magically hiding the complexity behind a veneer of smooth touch screen goodness that automates 95% of the crap and demos amazingly well. A TV app store optimised for Apple's TV remote control interface would be revolutionary for most people used to the incumbents. The TV market is prime hunting ground.

And I'm not even an Apple fan! Given all the unix based TV operating systems out there (Samsung I'm looking at you) this could have happened long ago given the right investment. Clearly they've all had it coming.

I don't have mod points but +1 to this!

How can they back a bill like this whilst simultaneously the Phone Hacking scandal continues unabated? Isn't this exactly the same thing, only on a grander scale?

For the code itself, as other people have said, I would far prefer an expert to hunt-and-peck 100 lines of awesome than have some random person bash out 1000 lines of WTF at 150 WPM. Where the real difference comes in IMO is the documentation/commenting of said code. In my experience, if someone has difficulty typing quickly they are far less likely to document and comment their code as frequently as someone who can type well. So it's still worth learning even if you are an expert :)

Apparently most stores only got 10 or so units and they sold out immediately. Pretty hard to sell more units of something if you don't have the stock.

This already exists. XBMC has been ported to Windows, MacOS and Linux. A small nettop like the Asrock ION 330 is smaller and quieter than either the XBox 360 or the PS3 and is more than capable of playing back high def content.

What's that in Libraries of Congress?