The problem with that is where I am at, there's typically no voice coverage, either. There are huge areas in rural Western, WA that you can't get a cell signal because there's hills and mountains between you and any towers. What's even more funny is that when I'm at home, I get service from one tower that is 40 miles away. If the power goes out, there's no other tower nearby to take the calls, and there's no plan for any of the telco's to put one in. Heck, the one tower that feeds 4 towns (one having a population of 4 - 5000) is typically down for a total of about a month out of the year. Instead of putting a little money into upgrading it and it's capacity, they simply put money into fixing an EDGE tower, where a 3G or LTE tower would make more sense.

The problem isn't that they can't upgrade the tower, it's that they don't want to because the other company that uses their bands would also reap the benefits of the newer tower and access due to sharing agreements. For them, keeping us on limited voice + EDGE is the best way to go, I guess.

Good old "Sokka-ism" with that one.. makes it nice and fitting.

The last thing Java tried to install on my machine other than itself was the Bing toolbar, but I haven't seen that with the later 1.6 updates.

I thought Money was retired in 2008. I know you couldn't purchase a 2009 version of it, as they didn't make it.

The saddest thing about that is that Money was actually one GOOD piece of software, especially compared to Quicken and the other bill management software that's been out there.

Actually, it's not that bad. I use Windows as my HTPC box because I can't get reliable Blu-Ray support on Linux. I turned off UAC, set every notification icon to minimize and not display notifications, and pretty much leave Windows Media Center up on the screen or switch to VLC. In the rare instance I have to use a webbrowser to watch a show (CBS... I'm looking at you), I have the option available, and can still get pretty good quality out of it.

Now if only I could get a better video card that has an intel chipset on it (nvidia and ati suck for this), so it would fit my screen without requiring me to change the zoom settings and HD audio. As it sits right now, the older intel chipset only supports 2 channel audio over HDMI.

The other major difference is that Hulu on PS3 will play at 720 & 1080, on the PC it's capped at 480 for the majority of programs. It's much nicer to be able to watch some of the shows on Hulu in full HD that I have until recently missed because I won't pay almost $100/mo for cable.

This is my biggest gripe with Linux. I love tinkering with it, and I would really like to use it, but I can understand why companies that would bring users over won't support it. Think about it, with Windows and Mac, you have one major codebase that is used. With linux, you have a commonality in some packages, but then you have every manufacturer changing whatever they want, however they want, and in order to provide a product that works best for the users, you'd have to ensure that too many things were the same. Linux is just too fragmented, which is the nature of the beast that it is. There's such a thing as customizable, but in many cases, being too customizable more a lot more than too much of a good thing. I like my linux boxes, and I use them quite regularly, but the only real purpose I can consistently use them for is server tasks.

They'll find a way to screw us into paying more taxes no matter what happens. They've already started with our '$30 car tabs' that the people passed several years ago. Now, they require a new license plate every 5 years on a vehicle, plus they can raise the rate being paid for tabs based on the weight of the vehicle. They're already talking about upping sales tax, which will likely pass. Next they will be looking at a state income tax once more. It's been pushed several times over the past 20 years, and each time they push it, it gets closer to passing. Now that there's a true fiscal need due to one of the highest budget deficits in state history, the state legislature is going to have to find a way to make up that difference. The only way is to raise taxes.

The down side is that many small businesses, which there are thousands of in WA, will likely burden the majority of these taxes. Companies like Microsoft will likely keep their tax breaks to stay here, while the rest of small businesses pay the exorbitant B&O taxes that are levied. Paying $75 in taxes on an $80 job (and yes, this did happen in one town here in WA just recently) means that no-one could survive while running a small business unless they charged prices that the economy can't sustain.

Actually, streaming to the Xbox is done in HD, albeit 720p last I checked. The PS3 also gets some content in HD, but not as much as the Xbox does yet. The Xbox in our house is pretty much used only for netflix streaming as it's connected to the old tv in the bedroom (and netflix is currently the only content we watch on that TV). I have brought it out to my 46" Bravia and seen a difference when streaming the HD version of content vs. the SD version of the same content.

I'm actually surprised the PS3 doesn't get more HD content, but then again, Microsoft has pretty much bought their way into being the sole provider of quite a few multiplatform contents that I would much rather see on my PS3. Not only do they get to have Netflix deny some HD content to the PS3, but they also took over the Rock Band Network, which means that 95% or more of the RBN releases that are coming out are only on the Xbox.

I have comcast, which gave me McAfee for the last few years, but then they switched to Norton, which caused nothing but problems for my machine. So, I went on the same search about a week ago. I tried quite a few, but after reading about many, I settled on MSE as well.

Clamwin had issues in that all the testing reviews I could find only showed it recognizing about 50% of the viruses that were thrown at it. Avast! was listed higher, but it slowed machines down, AVG has always had one issue or another on the computers I've installed it on, and the free versions of any commercial product are so watered down that they were not worth it, either.

I went with MSE after reading quite a few positive reviews that put it above most other free AVs out there. It's got it's own issues (only finding about 95% of the viruses thrown at it), but it's still much better than any other option I've tried. I've even found it to not interfere with any other processes that are running.