Get an internet TV

Yuck. Do not want. I do have one, but i refuse to connect it to the network.

Using an entire computer for a media centre is sacrileg

Did I say that's all I do with it? It acts as a fileserver for the house, and has steam on it, (big picture mode also works pretty well from the couch)

if you love the tiles and apps so much, get an xbox and use that,

What microsofts pay-to-use-internet ad-ridden version of not-really-windows? No thanks. I don't have or want an xbox.

XboxOne's kinect voice controls actually work quite well.

No thanks.

The point I was trying to make was that metro is ergonomically retarded for a desktop or laptop.

Its fine for single tasking full screen apps - even on a desktop or laptop, but I agree that's a distinct minority of what *I* do with either of those, while its nearly all I do with the HTPC.

Fuck your metro Fanboyishness (sp),

Get real. I'm not Metro fanboi. I like it for what its good at.

you're making excuses by saying it's good at something it was never made to do,

No, I'm just saying it IS actually quite good at something that quite a few people do, even if that wasn't really what it was designed for. Its also decent as a phone OS. I certainly don't see it taking over the desktop, but being -able- to run it there isn't a bad thing.

but agreeing with the fact that it's awful at what it is supposed to do.

I'm honestly not sure what Microsoft thought it was supposed to do on the desktop. Did they really expect to see accountants running their accounting program, email, and excel sheets as full screen apps and swiping between them? Surely they aren't that dense... they could have just looked over an accountants shoulder...after all.

In the world of Metro, I can get the same app for $3.99

http://apps.microsoft.com/wind...

Says its free? Is there a plan to charge 3.99 at some point? I'm confused.

Does anyone NOT using a touchscreen device use apps on windows 8?

Yes. It is pretty good on a home theatre PC. The start screen is infinitely better from the couch then the old start menu, and the apps (like netflix, and the video player are easier to operate as well - both to see the controls, and to operate)

I've been looking forward to VLC for a while. As the included video player app displays ads in some circumstances and I find it offensive.

I'd also really like a good free open source file browser app.

Overall, I agree there's few apps I'd want on a desktop laptop, but media playback / management for photos, video, music, etc... apps tend to work very well. Basically for situations where you generally want to single task full screen something anyway, the apps are great.

OK, buy me a new car or I'll get the thugs in blue to beat and arrest you and destroy your property and kill your dog.

Comparing health care to a new car is as laughably ignorant and idiotic as comparing taxes to armed theft.

If you don't get a new car, you can take the bus, or walk. Or find work closer to home, or find a home closer to work, or both. My brother is married with kids and doesn't have a car. Why should anyone buy you one?

But health? If you don't have that, what are your options? How is health anything remotely like a new car?

You hate authority except when you want to use it to take from minorities and the poor

I'm not sure how socialized healthcare is somehow a 'take' from minorities and the poor. I look forward to seeing how your clearly addled brains connects those dots.

And a 2nd reply to the same post... if your placing 2-3 orders per week and sometimes more... your easily spending $1200+ on amazon and possibly quite a bit more even... so the price of prime as a percentage of your total purchases is quite a bit smaller than the post I was originally responding to.

You're completely ignoring speed.

Nope. I stipulated where I was I get 2-4 day shipping on free shipping anyway. Others in the thread have commented that free shipping has taken them weeks, but that's not my experience at all.

What do you order on amazon that you can't wait an extra few days for? The odd package sure, you need it next day... or better still ... right now. But if you are ordering something every 2nd day, and can wait 2 days for it, I find it hard to beleive that 5 days is a deal breaker.

To each their own, and it's your money, but it seems steep to me. Then again, ordering something on amazon every 2-3 days already seems borderline compulsive behaviour to me too.

Not to mention, I would rather pay Google $0.02 per GB for the service of "storing my data",

And them going through it to profile you, handing a copy to the government, and the likelihood that they get hacked one day (either en masse or just your account or some disgrunted employee) and it gets out to someone/everyone else just free perks then?

You also eat some business risk that they may decide to discontinue the service, with little or no notice.

And they may lose it. Google's lost data before after all. They're far better administrators than the average joe consumer, but they aren't magical. You should probably still arrange for another backup.

That said, I don't object to making use of cloud storage where appropriate... but google storage? Really? Don't they have enough of your data already?

, compared to paying you anything for the service of "oops, all your data was lost because this crappy consumer level drive failed"

Of course, one could maintain a couple copies. So when the drives inevitably fail, you've got more copies.

And really most data isn't worth backing up. My music / movies -- not going to sweat 99% of them. Vacation photos etc? I replicate copies to my family (and they to me). Odds of all of us losing them at once are near enough to zilch -- that whatever catastrophe manages to do it will probably make the lost photos the least of our concerns.

Plus, my orders rarely exceed $35, so it might take weeks to accumulate an order that big.

Wait... so you pay $100 for prime gladly. Yet your average order is usually less then $35, and it will often take WEEKS to accumulate an order that big?

So... that suggests your average is about $8, once a week. Or $416/year. And you'll pay approximately 24% extra (total ~$515/year) for the convenience of not having to bundle your orders together. (In my experience the 5-8 regular ground shipping is usually 2-4 where I live anyway.)

Am I close? Is it worth it? That seems a bit steep to me.

Amazon Prime wouldn't be worth it to me unless it was 5% or even less. But then if I was spending enough on amazon that 99$ would be say 3%; I'd be spending $3300/year at amazon, or 60$+ per week, and would have little issue getting free shipping anyway, and wouldn't need prime.

Because, you could have more of a say in how your state enacts or doesn't enact it.

That depends entirely on the state, and your views relative to the predominant view of the state.

If you didn't like that state's solution, you could move

If that's considered a valid option, their are plenty of other countries to choose from.

On the flip side, it being a federal program means there aren't as many douche moves available to corporations to play the states off each other; triggering interstate commerce conflicts, and leading to federal intervention anyway.

Won't it be wonderful when we go to a national taxpayer-payer system so those fines for improper behavior can become unavoidable

If they pass a law its unavoidable. They don't need single payer to tie it to your insurance coverage to make a law binding... making it a law already makes it unavoidable.

Single payer system or not really has no bearing on the situation.

And again, Canada's had socialized healthcare for 50+ years. Where's the evidence they'll ban soda, impose fines for being too fat, or make it illegal not to go jogging daily?

Canada's been sliding down that "slippery slope" for a couple GENERATIONS now, and these horrifying single-payer health directives you are spouting off about don't exist there any more than the do here. Neither in Britain, nor France, nor Switzerland... there are lots of single payer systems that have been around for quite a while now... so where is your mountain of evidence?

All you've got is silly FUD.

If your house burns down your NAS goes with it.

My family members have a few nas drives scattered around, and we've got ecnrypted folders on eachothers, with a few GB of crucial data that are in sync.

We also mirror our digital family / vacation photos in folders any of us can access.

So you support forcing people at gun point with the threat of prison

I pay my taxes voluntarily, and would do so even if there wasn't 'the threat of prison'. Its the price of living in civilized society.

Its not 'theft at gun point' and characterizing it as that is laughably ignorant.

For slightly more you can get consumer NAS stuff. WD Live NAS drives for storing 1TB aren't much more than the USB versions.

And they even have phone/tablet apps for accessing them.

What could possibly go wrong?

As opposed to what is wrong with the system we have now?

Today we ban softdrinks. Tomorrow, you get fined for being fat (or doing whatever unhealthy habit "they" don't want you to do).

Yeah, we're doing that now. Single payer clearly didn't create that particular slippery slope... since its been happening even in the absense of single payer.

Meanwhile Canada has what? 40? 50? years of socialized health care? -- Both countries tax cigarettes, both are on a path to decriminizing pot, and its still legal to buy a large soda anywhere in Canada. So... why exactly do you think your fear of single payer aren't unfounded nonsense?

I'm still searching the US Constitution where it says that the feds can force me to be my brothers keeper by force.

Your right of course, constitutionally, socialized medicare should be a state program. Although the constitution has 27 amendments, and another one for civilized health health care would certainly get my vote.

But that's beside the point. Surely your argument with respect to socialized healthcare isn't REALLY predicated on the fact that the program is managed from the wrong level of government?

Were it local-governor-care instead, would that really make you substantially happier? How so?