But here's the other problem: DTV doesn't charge you for a DTV box. It's free with your monthly subscription. How can they release a box that competes with, say, a $200-400 box from Apple and give it away with a $29/month satellite TV subscription?

And why would anyone "cream themselves" when Apple releases their new Apple TV box? So far, Apple TV has been a supremely mediocre product. It's not really even competitive with Roku. The UI for the Apple TV isn't exactly insanely great either.

As for assimilating Roku-like features, check out this news story on Samsung and RVU. Samsung is building the Roku-like features into the TV directly. DTV is serving their data stream (video and GUI interaction) to the TV. DTV benefits because they have to supply one less DTV box. The customer benefits because they have one less box and one less remote, but they can still start watching a recorded show in one room and finish watching it in another.

You are arguing against a point of view that the tea party has not adopted. What "social conservative bullshit", and I do mean specific, verifiable examples, are you referring to?

The Tea (Taxed Enough Already) Party is not about social issues. While individual members may have axes to grind on social issues, the movement itself isn't about them.

LK

Ability to wake up at a scheduled time is important for a DVR, which needs to be able to wake up and record video at a scheduled time.

That's the big one. Otherwise, you're going to have to be able to connect to an NTP server before you write to any file so that you can know what the last modification time is going to be.

But how can we be sure that the Raspberry Pi be manufactured on that sort of scale? Or are we instead likely to run into shortages that parallel those of a newly launched video game console?

Once you figure in the $360 per year price of a mobile data subscription, how is that only "a little higher"?

I mean seriously, how do you ever even get out of bed in the morning?

I get out of bed just to sit here and tell people like you that the world really is out to get you, and that if you go into every interaction with the mindset that the other side wants to fuck you in the ass, you'll at least be prepared with the lube.

There's no reason for that. We've offered to assist in the setup nuclear power plants to North Korea in exchange for discontinuing their weapons development program. If we're willing to do that, a few water purifiers is hardly anything to worry about. Besides, I think fresh water is a better diplomat than a Predator drone.

Was and is.

There have been some efforts, with differing levels of success, to co-opt the tea party and refocus it on establishment Republican goals but without question the tea party was and is a real movement.

LK

Actually, those booths should be sitting next to each other. All the high tech drones, big guns, fighters, bombers, and armor doesn't mean much if your soldiers starve or run out of water. Sun Tzu said as much -- it was pretty much chapter 1 of The Art of War. It may not be very sexy, but it's like saying the internet is important... and electricity isn't.

Yeah, it's dramatic to be wasting billions in labor to invent devices, methods, and software that's only different enough to get past some patent or copyright restriction. But as you said, this is slashdot, and big picture thinking is a rarity here... you know, seems too... dramatic.