I've been dreaming of something like this for ages. Snooty geeks can look down their nose all they want, but I doo tech geek stuff for a living all day. I don't want to have to do it at home. I don't care of my TV has the absolute highest number of pixels or whatever. I just want to get home, turns stuff on, and wathc things that look good. I don't want to screw with multiple remotes. I hate ugly cables. I just want to pop in a disc or select from a menu and start watching. And they way it looks like you can integrate this with opther modular Ikea furniture looks very versatile and handy. Add in the extra inputs and you can still do all kinds ofcray thinsg if you want. An excellent combination of technology and usability without sacrificing flexibility.

My only problem with it is I have to wait a year.

He is 50% Hispanic. Also 50% white. So he's "hispanic" only by the same racist logic which claims Barak Obama is "black."

In America, apparently you have to take the label of your darkest ancestor, no matter how small a percentage.

What's amazing is how many otherwise intelligent, tolerant people will still insist vociferously that Obama is black even while being forced to admit that he's just as white as black. It's becaise peopel don't care about race really, they care about labels, stereotypes, and personal identity issues.

Here's a suggestion: drop video entirely. Really. Stick with your core competency and do that well. Don't expand just for the sake of expansion.

A poll for the owners of Slashdot:

Which of the following things do you think is true?

1) There isn't enough video content on the internet.
2) Slashdot, a text-based news site, is qualified to do video better than it's being done anywhere else on the Internet.
3) Slashdot's user base has been clamoring for video. All these years we've been reaidng text stories but secretly pining for video
4) If Slashdoit doesn't do video it will be "stale" and not "hip" enough for "the kids"
5) It isn't enough to just do one thing well forever, you have to keep adding new things until you do NONE of them well, and die.

Seriously. You are a text-based geek news site. You do that really well. Just do what you know. Don't dliute yourself into mediocrity like so many other sites. Don't let the MBAs take over. They don't know shit about geek stuff.

I can't speak for everyone, but I think a lot of people have the same reaction I do: Making a profit is fine. The question is whether it's an OBSCENE profit or not, and if that obscene profit is coming at the cost of killing people.

If you want to make a new blender and sell it for a 2000% profit, have at it. I don't care. If people want your blender, they'll pay more for it. If they don't want it, they won't. You may lose money, but no one dies. Same thing with shit like Botox. I don't care if rich old bags pay 500% profit on something like that. But if there's something that PEOPLE WILL DIE WITHOUT, then it becoems a moral question. Even then, making a reasonable profit is understandable. 100%? Well, OK. 200%? Starting to raise my eyebrows here. The truth is that one of the huge reasons healthcare keeps climbing so fast is largely because medical fields have realized that 1) people want to live, and 2) will pay anything to continue doing so, and thus 3) you can just keep raising the prices as much as you want and feeding the profit to your investors.

If I were president of the world, I'd pass a law saying that medically required devices and medications (i.e., from injury and illness, not cosmetic stuff) could not be marked up more than, say, 300%. If you say "no point in making something if you can't make a profit", OK, fair enough. But if you're saying "Waaaah!!! 300% isn't ENOUGH profit, I don't care if people die, I need MORE!!" then I reply: "Fuck you, you soulless greedy assholes."

I complete agree with you. I couldn't even finish the first one, because I *HATED* the protagonist so much. Don't get me wrong, I'm a sophisticated reader (degree in English) and I can handle the concept of anti-hero, or hero you don't like that much, protagonist who isn't that sympathetic, whatever. But i just literally HATED Thomas Covenant. He was such a whiny little BITCH that I wished he was real so I could hunt him down and slap him as hard as I could. It was like reading a book about a rich, entitled, spoiled 12-year-old who just wouldn't shut up.

Challenge the reader with a protagonist who isn't that likable or makes questionable decisions? Sure. But writ a book where the protagonist just ANNOYS THE PISS out of you? Well, maybe it's brave in some literary sense, but I'm sure as hell not going to torture myself to read it. It's like a novelist writing a book and insisting that you read it in the same room as a busy band saw. Sorry, pal. Maybe it's good and all, but I'll never know because they annoyance level makes it so not worth the effort.

Peat, there have been lost of angry replies, and while this situation makes me a little mad too, I think i can briefly and succinctly sum up the problem people have without using harsh language (though it's tempting):

1) Your automated system automatically issues takedowns when what it should do is send potential violations to a human for confirmation before any takedowns are issued. Lots of people probably won't fight takesdowns, which means you win by default. Many people here feel that's dirty pool, that the original poster is only getting the decision reversed because he got attention on Slashdot, and if he hadn't, he would have been out of luck.

2) Even after the automated takedown was disputed, your system sent an automated response falsely clamining that the piece had been reviewed and confirmed. That, as other people have pointed out, was a bald-faced lie. The fact that Rumblefish even automates its responses to takedown appeals is incredibly annoying. Clearly, your company wants to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to appeal. Can you see how this might infuriate people? It's not just "talk to the hand, dude", it's "I can't be bothered to say 'talk to the hand', so you can talk to my robot's hand.'" Basically, you clam to have judged the situation, but your judge is a just a parrot who squawks "Confirmed!!" at any dispute.

3) It appears to me, and apparently some others, that your business model is unsustainable if done responsibly because there's a fundamental conflict. If you employ enough humans to do it with honesty and integrity, you won't make any money. But if you use tons of automation, you end up with your pants down in fiascos like this. I think I speak for some others when I say that it seems your company cares more about making money, no matter what little guys get hurt, than it does about integrity. Obviously you can get away with this behaviour because anyone with two brain cells know that in this country only people with money can afford to buy the law they need. But it doesn't make it right.

10 I don't encrypt my mail because the people I send mail to aren't set up for decryption
20 The people I send mail to aren't set up for decryption because they don't have to be because no one sends encrypted mail.
30 GOTO 10

Why do something as smart as eliminating timezones and then do something as stupid as keep DST? Whatever we do with time zones, DST should already have been eliminated as an ancient, useless relic decades ago.

It's a pretty simple equation: if the cost of the stuff you buy is less than what you'd pay for an average subscription (say, $15/month) then you're probably getting a pretty good deal.

My strategy is to buy very little extra content, but I will once in a while if it's something I really want, like an unlockable class I want to play, an item that makes my life easier, or a new region to play in. I definitely NEVER pay for purely cosmetic shit like fancy clothing, or min/maxing like a weapon that does 1 or 2 more damage than the best one I can get playing free.

Treat the game like you (hopefully) treat real life - don't buy stupid shit, don't spend too much, think about your purchases carefully, etc. For me there are lots of games that I would never pay $15/month to maintain, but might keep around on my hard drive to jump into for a couple hours here and there and maybe spend a couple bucks a month.

It's a good model. I always though the perfect MMO pricing model would be "by-the-hour with a maximum". I won't pay $15/month every month to keep a WoW subscription. But if they had a scheme where I paid $1/hour, UP TO A MAX OF $15 (after with subsequent hours are free) it would be awesome. People like me who just want to jump in for 3-4 hours one Friday night a month could do that, pay $3-$4, and on months we didn't play, we'd pay nothing. If I happened to get really into it one month and play 30 hours, then I don't pay more than I would have with a normal subscription. And people who play heavily every month would not notice any difference, they'd just hit the $15 max every month. And Blizzard gets a few extra bucks from me that the don't now get because I just stay unsubscribed. Win/win for everyone. I get to enjoy playing once in a while but not pay for a full subscription every month, Blizzard gets money from me they would not otherwise have gotten.

But if even if you practice and get good at using chopsticks as well as a fork.... why bother at all? Assuming you grew up in the west, you grew up using a fork. If you NOW live full-time in Asia and have to use chopsticks because they're what's available, that's a valid reason. But westerners who live in the west and use chopsticks (only for Asian food, of course) are simply going out of their way to acquire a smug and annoying affectation.