This is exactly what is happening on the xBox 360 today, they even call them 'apps' after the most recent update. There is an app for NetFlix, ESPN3, Hulu Plus, UFC, and a variety of other news type video sources and movie sources (there is an HBO app coming soon too). This is exactly what I want as long as it stays reasonably priced because instead of paying the crazy costs of cable/satellite TV and only watching a small set of the channels that are paid for this new system is more a la carte. The only problem I see in the future is a bandwidth problem because if the majority of people switched to getting their TV entertainment over the internet it is going to be a huge strain without major upgrades. The bandwidth issue is the only thing I can see holding back this revolution in entertainment that has been growing over the last few years.

Personally I love that more and more content is becoming available online (legally). I dumped my cable TV about 3 years ago and have not looked back in remorse yet, I get nearly everything I want on my xBox 360 and most of it is even commercial free. They have even been increasing the sports content which is what I missed the most after dropping cable TV and this year I got to watch every BCS bowl game live at no extra cost using the ESPN3 app, it is great.

I agree it does require a good amount of light if you are using the Kinect in a fashion needing a camera but that makes no difference for controlling "TV" entertainment such as on Netflix and Hulu Plus and the other apps. I have a far from perfect living room and for such usage it works GREAT, all I have to do is say "xbox, next episode" or whatever command and you can even do searching now by voice so your comment is incorrect if you are running the latest updates. You also can't blame the Kinect for having a problem if your kid is running around yelling and making noises, sounds like a parenting issue to me.

Haha the old "Fox News is EVIL" rant. Please go on foxnews.com right now and bring up a story that encourages active hatred of fellow Americans, I dare you. If they are "highly destructive" then this should be an easy task. Do not mistake political disagreements as hatred though. It is funny how people like you think one of the ONLY right leaning news sources is "biased" while nearly all other news sources are left leaning. Yes, that makes you a hypocrite, learn to respect free speech even if it hurts your poor little feelings or disagrees with you.

This is most certainly government waste, I can't blame the private companies for taking a chance to get way overpaid. I would say this is either one of two things, the first being the person in charge of awarding the contract(s) to a company they got along with the best and also had a cost closest to what was budgeted. I have heard so many first hand stories of those in the government making sure to spend all money in a budget for fear of the budget being cut, there is no benefit to cutting costs apparently. My second guess is the contract was awarded to companies run/own/invested in by buddies of whoever was in charge of the contract without worrying if they were qualified, similar to how the White House got Solyndra their loan even with warnings that the company was doomed.

If on the off chance the person in charge of awarding the contract was not doing either of those things then this is a prime example of management making decisions on things they have NO CLUE about. I can guarantee if I were to mention to some of my developer friends that I could get a contact for such basic work for such extreme fees that they would bust out laughing at how much the contract awarder was overpaying. Seriously, this is the results you can get with non-technical management making technical management decisions, they have no idea what it takes to complete such a project and figure since magic wizards developers are involved they are getting a good deal even though they are getting hugely ripped off.

Even though the project is pretty pointless I think a better alternative would have been to offer the gig kind of like an internship to a college student or team of students. The project is so simple that I don't see why even only one student would have a problem completing an app for each platform and offer either a small stipend or even let the developer keep one of each of the 3 platforms phones for free to do with as they wish. I am usually not an advocate for working semi-free but when I was nearing graduating college I would have jumped at the chance to get some great real world experience for a widely known organization like OSHA and get to expand my mobile device development skills as well as pick up some cool electronics in the deal. I mean seriously this would only take working a few nights for a few weeks and some weekends as well, there is an API to get GPS information so that is dead easy to grab, it is trivial to use a GPS coordinate to query for temperature in that region, and then you would just have to add in a small collection of information/warning messages. Sounds like a perfect project for a younger developer looking for experience.

The discs you mentioned are from the same source, Cranberry was just a company (that does not seem to exist any longer) that handled the marketing of the MDiscs. The technology has been around a while, I used one of the drives and played around with the media a few years ago at my former employers office and at that time I think the discs went by the names Cranberry DiamondDisc as well as the manufacturers name M-ARC disc.

I have worked with these discs and one of their drives and was very skeptical at first but after learning more about it I realized it is really pretty ground breaking and useful for archiving data. I of course joked around with the same joke you said regarding the actual life of the discs but compared to current writable optical media M-Discs are definitely a huge step up.

You see a regular writable discs main long term storage problem is the dye used to store the data degrades MUCH quicker than any other part of the disc and it WILL degrade most likely in a few years although some dyes are better made and last longer. But once the dye is gone all that remains is the reflector layer and all the previously available data is gone.

M-Discs don't use dye and instead use a rock-like layer that the drive laser punches holes through and the rock-like layer degrades MUCH slower than anything else making up the discs which probably could last hundreds of years if taken care of and if there are not other failures such as adhesive or polycarbonite degradation problems. Of course at some point the data will need to be transferred to another medium but since the discs are readable by standard DVD drives there will be readers available for them for a LONG time since optical drive manufacturers always maintain backwards compatibility with older optical media standards.

Another benefit of optical drives is the "reader" is not tied to the storage medium like most other modern data storage technologies. If the reading mechanics go out in a hard drive or flash media drive then in order to read the data again the device will need to be taken apart and repaired or have the platters/flash media chip transfered to a working setup which is both difficult to do and usually expensive unless you know the right people. With optical media if the optical drive has problems reading a disc that is in good condition and not damaged/corrupted then you just hook a different drive up to the computer, take the optical disc out of the non-functioning drive and put it in the new drive and you can start reading right away and get back to work.

IMO right now optical media archiving using discs that really do not degrade (okay degrade in 10s/100s or years instead of just years) is the best way to go for long term data storage especially because there is a great track record of making sure new optical drives support reading old optical media formats. Think about this, I could take one of the first CD albums ever manufactured, Billy Joel's 52nd street sold in Japan in 1982, and walk into a store that sells computers and easily find a computer that can read the CD. What other media that is ~30 years old could you do the same with?

CDs, DVDs, and Laser Discs are created the same way. They are aluminum discs sandwiched between two layers of plastic, with the pits etched in with a laser (the lands are the unmodified parts of the disc).

Manufactured optical discs do NOT have the aluminum layer etched using a laser, instead they are "pressed" and a die is used to press pits into a mostly aluminum layer which is done all at once (like how a stamp works). Write-able optical discs instead have a reflective layer with a layer of dye in front of it and the laser punches holes in the dye which is really just a phase change allowing the areas hit by the laser to let the reading laser through so it can be reflected back to the reading sensor. Re-writable discs have further functionality allowing to phase change between "pit" and "land".

Last year I canceled my cable TV, upgraded to a higher speed tier of cable internet, paid for an xbox live gold membership, got a HD tuner, and now get all of my video entertainment through broadcast TV channels, going to network websites, and using my xbox 360 to watch NetFlix and Zune. I am definitely very happy with the change although I do miss not having access to as much sports programming as well as miss History channel, Discovery Channel, and a few others. I get new movie DVDs sent to me from NetFlix, get to watch the standard network programming, and really enjoy the NetFlix streaming video where I have watched many movies and love that I can get through seasons of TV shows quickly since I don't deal with advertisements.

My favorite benefit of this switch is I have much more control over what I watch compared to flipping through cable channels and I can watch what I choose on my own schedule whenever I want. I do miss having access to more sports coverage but have been impressed with the ESPN channel on my xbox which I have used to watch a few games in HD and it was awesome and I hope they keep expanding the amount of content.

I don't think the site was Slash-dotted to 403 status, when the slash-dotting started I think they saw that a big "theft" was about to occur and they had to put a stop to it by cutting off access before they went bankrupt from so much "theft" occurring taking dollars out of their pockets! Hopefully they stay offline, whoever is running the site seems insane!

I apologize for the harsh answer, my original post was a bit confusing as you explained. The first part of my post was talking about castle doctrine and why I like it and don't want the yahoo I was responding to moving to Arizona and donating to politicians who would try and increase gun control. I ended the first paragraph with a sentence backing up why I hold the position I do.

My second paragraph just went into more details as to why I like having access to firearms due to the dangers where I live, I have seen video on the news caught on security cameras of home invasions where multiple mexican's are storming a house with AR-15's, I wouldn't want to be stuck with calling the police as my only option in that situation, I would want a firearm in hand. I did not intend to try and prove the crime rate is lower in AZ due to having less gun restrictions but if we enacted restrictions similar to Chicago (or IL in general, you are required to have a firearm owner ID card to buy 22 bullets and other BS in that corrupt state) or Washington DC I wouldn't be suprised to see crime increase even more.

I don't know why your criminal rates are lower in France, but I highly doubt they are lower due to stricter gun control. Of course gun crimes may be lower due to stricter gun control but I would definitely love to see some proof that stricter gun control has lowered all crime across the board. I am basing that stance on the stats I have seen in the US for locations that have increased gun control, the crime rate seems to always go up, I have even seen this be the case with locations outside the US. Also, to me it just makes sense that if a criminal knows the person he wants to commit a crime against has the chance of being armed with a firearm they would less likely choose to commit the crime compared to if they know nearly 100% that the person does not have a firearm, just the chance of having a firearm would be a deterant to me personally. Whatever floats your boat though, I like my gun rights and you seem to like your gun restrictions, to each their own.

One more thing and that is I think a large part of the crime in AZ is due to illegal immigrants, it is a fact drug cartels recruit them for crimes such as the kidnappings and human/drug smuggling and suprisingly after the US started enforcing some stricter illegal immigrant rules and also jobs were less available the illegal immigrant populations fell by nearly a third in Arizona and crime rates fell drastically AND quickly too. In fact, in the first few months after the illegal immigrant populations fell crime was down 25% in Phoenix and 19% in Mesa which I found very interesting and also why I am for more policies to lower the illegal immigrant population. I have no problem with immigrants, in fact I welcome anyone to the USA who wants to come here peacefully, just do it legally of course. Here is a link to an article in the Phoenix Business Journal talking about the crime decreases:

http://www.bizjournals.com/phoenix/stories/2009/07/27/daily89.html