> why would the school not upload to you tube?

You obviously know nothing about the way schools work. There is an entire industry devoted to reinventing every wheel for educational use. Some of it makes some sense, schools have a lot of mandates for privacy and so on, but most of it is simply because. YouTube would be right out, a contract with an edu specific video hosting site would be required, and it would of course require a hefty annual contract with each school system. Each school would have to get a customized portal with the school logo, colors and such or it is a no sale. Access controls are a must. You can't put a picture that includes a student on a school's public facing website without moving a lot of paper for clearances.... meanwhile the local paper's website has the same photo from the game up that day and the kids themselves post everything onto their facebook pages in realtime. And it simply must be this way, the idea that it could be different could never occur. If nothing else, schools simply wouldn't be able to handle the concept of a vendor that doesn't charge.

Thank HTML5 for the death of caching as much as the advertising.

It is all apps now. And in schools they KNOW they are all incompetent boobs so they want nothing that requires skilled labor to maintain. So outsourcing is the word. Everything. Gradebooks, attendance, cafeteria manegement, email of course, Courseware, scheduling and calendaring, yearbooks. If it isn't being delivered from the cloud now it is because they are still fighting over which vendor they want to write a check to. (read as the bidding is still fierce over who will kick back more.. ok, I'm a cynic) That pattern means they need LOTS of bandwidth now and will need an ever growing amount going forward into an HD Video for everything future.

And the vendors love it. It will of course drive lots of sales to schools themselves but when the kids can't do their homework without a constant high bandwidth connection it drives the 'Internet is a 'Right'' meme that leads to even more billions and billions of sweet sweet government money that will only be available to the politically connected.

He'll go into obscurity for a few years. Then, out of the blue, he'll show up to help the real-life Harold and Kumar and then become a womanizer in NY on a real-life "How I Met Your Mother".

don't you think it's a little demeaning to dismiss the heartfelt beliefs of major segments of today's human population as "mythology"?

Welcome to Slashdot. Please check your cultural baggage at the door.

We only allow sacred cows with names like "Mac" and "PC" and "Emacs" and "VI" in here - And even those, we'll still butcher and barbecue if it suits our whims.

If the supernova was behind or near the Sun, earthlings around 775 wouldn't have been able to detect it.

Nearby supernovae appear as one of the brightest objects in the sky for a few days to a week. The remnants remain visible for months, and then have a habit of leaving a nebula behind.

The Earth travels slightly more than one degree of its orbit per day; The Sun, as seen from the Earth, subtends half a degree of arc. In the absolute worst case, the sun couldn't completely "hide" a supernova for more than a single day; and half a week later, the supernova remnant would dominate the dusk (or dawn) as the brightest thing in the sky except possibly the moon.

Sure your reconstruction is possible, however, we have a thing in this country called benefit of the doubt. More importantly, if for some reason George Zimmerman had been unable to communicate when the police arrived, the reconstruction of what happened based on the other evidence would more closely resemble the story George Zimmerman told than what you suggested.

So - you give up and admit the validity of my counterargument?

You don't have a counterargument, you have a straw man.

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 seem to think that a system that isn't "dumb" would produce a better result. What, exactly, should Michael White do about all the uninformed speculation about unannounced Apple TV-related products? Unlike Slashdot commenters, he doesn't have the luxury of pretending there are all sorts of cheap content deals available that would allow him to offer you exactly the channels you want at 75% off the current price.

Maybe he should say "Yeah, the mediocre UI on the Apple TV box sure is a big threat to us. We are also randomly afraid of unknown unannounced Apple products. We have several non-specific initiatives to address these unknown, potentially competitive threats."

... that you somehow meaningfully interact with from 8 feet away.