Not to mention that this type of merger would give Comcast a roughly 30% revenue boost. Revenue they have already shown us all that they are quite capable of using to bribe government employees at all levels to promote their own financial interests over the rights and protections those same government employees are charged with protecting!

The obvious logic fault in this argument is the assumption that local governments are any less corrupt than state or federal ones....

Of course the FCC will let this happen - There are still lots of six and seven figure salary positions open for ex-FCC honchos at Comcast!

Plain and simply the easiest distro for those migrating to Linux for the first time

Use 13 because it is a Long Term Release model, and choose either the 32 or 64 bit version according to your needs

Although not new to Linux, I've been using Mint for years as my primary desktop, and it does 99% of everything I need to do. For the remaining 1%, I use Crossover or Virtualbox

I've recently installed it for my fiance on her laptop, which previously ran Vista, and not only does it run BETTER than Vista ever did, she's completely happy, and has never used Linux previously

I've used Knoppix, Puppy, SUSE, Centos, Ubuntu, Mepis, Arch, Vector, and even DSL, but for migrating to Linux with little or no previous Linux experience, you simply cannot beat Linux Mint.

The only other word of advice is to check up on how to set up your /home directory on a separate partition during the initial install. This way you have the option to completely re-install or upgrade your OS without losing your user data at some point in the future.

No need to hassle with scraping for your EPG data, when an annual subscription to Schedules Direct is only $25 year.

There's also a 2 month 'tryout' for $6, to test how well it integrates with your media OS.

Their website lists about 4 dozen or so applications their service works with-

http://www.schedulesdirect.org/

Using MythTV (the Mythbuntu variant) and an OTA antenna with a pair of HDHomerun dual tuners was my own answer to getting rid of a massively bloated cable bill.The most surprising result, six months later, is that those 'cable' shows that were going to be sacrificed, and sorely missed, simply turned out not to be so important after all. Let's face it, most folks have a finite amount of viewing time available, and as it turns out, shows that were scrapped were quickly replaced by other shows, and became replacement 'favorites' instead. Shows that had not been watched previously, due to the amount of available viewing time, turned out to be just as enjoyable as the ones they replaced. Let's face it, none of the stuff aired on ANY network or cable lineup is all that exceptional in the first place, it's not really all that hard to find something that can be an equally mindless diversion.

The biggest surprise in our particular household was how large the percentage of viewing shifted to PBS, for both adult and children's programming, as well as discovering that the OTA antenna could also (in my location) receive a couple of Canadian signals which have excellent programming, that had never been offered through the local Comcast cable feed. Sure, there's always the option of online streaming for some programming now and again, but far, far less that we initially expected.

On the technical side, I now have the ability to actually record up to five signals at once, more if I use the multiplexing feature of HDTV broadcasts. The old DVR could handle two, and no multiplexing capability. Storage is limited to what *I* decide it will be. Instead of being stuck with 60-120 hours of non-HD programming, and no option to expand beyond that because I'm stuck with a DVR that actually supports expandable storage but is locked out of doing so by a cable provider. With 3.5TB of storage online, I can handle 500 hours of HD programming easily, and I can expand that to the limits of what I want to invest in HD space. Last but not least, all of my recorded media is available on every TV in the house, using either dedicated frontend machines, Laptops running XBMC, and in the case of my toddler, a Raspberry Pi based frontend to service his own viewing requirements of his favorite shows, plus ripped versions of his DVD collection, all on demand, (with a little assistance from Mom and Dad).

Not to say that there were no hurdles to overcome, and to set up a fully networked MythTV setp does require an investment in equipment and time, as well as some routine maintenance, but now all five TVs in my house have full access to 30 OTA channels, any and all scheduled recordings, an extensive music collection, online photo viewing, weather reporting, selected online news feeds, as well as an extensive DVD collection. No cable company that I am aware of offers this type of all in one media solution, and based on what I was paying for the paltry level of service I was previously subscribed to, with constant price increases looming in the future, I'm one very happy cable cutter these days!

Actually Google appears not to be thinking too clearly at all lately in regards to Chrome and Linux. Earlier last year a Chrome update on Linux Mint 13 was so unusable that I, as well as others I am sure, had no choice but to switch to Firefox if they wanted a usable browser. It took well over a month before this was resolved, but ultimately one of the updates to Chrome magically solved the problem. Just a few weeks ago, another Chrome update resulted in the resurrection of a previously 'fixed' full screen bug, that once again, renders Chrome unusable with Linux Mint 13. At least one update, possibly two, since then still have not fixed the problem, and once again, if you want a functional browser, Firefox is the logical choice. If Chrome was breaking an obscure Linux derivative this could probably be understandable, but breaking a popular Ubuntu based distro like Mint proves that there is not near enough attention to detail being given to Chrome on Linux these days. Twice in less than a year, no choice but to find an alternate browser means I am faced with the possibility that, although I have been a devoted Chrome supporter right from the start, I'm starting to think that a permanent migration away from Chrome might be less problematic if this is what is going to become the 'norm' for Chrome and Linux. Google's approach with RHEL just seems to be a further indication of a lessening of how important Google thinks Chrome and Linux are for the future.

I'm certain that come August I won't be getting a permanent 1/6th reduction of the junk mail that has to be carted off to the local landfill every week...

It also means the government wouldn't need to subpoena records of your internet activity from a third party, since they would already have it.....

The idea of everyone sharing their wifi with everyone else is nothing less than delusional. For all of the legal issues brought up already, and numerous others. Short of state sponsored free wifi for anyone and everyone, it's just not going to happen. And I'm pretty sure that most folks would be highly skeptical of how much data the 'state' was collecting on any such endeavor anyway.

It's no secret that the politicians here in the U.S. are the best that money can buy.... Now if the citizens that voted them into office could only figure out a way to get legislation passed that forces them to represent the interests of their constituents, instead of serving the interests of their campaign contributors in order to take advantage of their constituents, we'd be making some much needed progress towards what the original 'Congress' intended.

The Beta doesn't work on Linux Mint 13, due to all sorts of issues with needing a specific version of Flash, or messages about vendor drivers.

And then there's the fubar that clicking the Steam launcher that was put on my desktop by the beta opens in Chrome, and Steam only seems to want to work properly with Firefox, which is installed on my system, but was not selected by the installer.

If you get past all of those hurdles, and get steam running under Firefox, you quickly discover that almost all "Free" games (for trying out Steam Beta on LInux) are "not available for your platform".

Did get one Free game to agree to install, but Steam indicated there would be a download time of over 3-1/2 hours for the installation (on cable internet mind you!)

Uhhhhh... No thanks....

Maybe a few more betas later this will be a workable platform.

First Impressions? Not ready for even sub-prime time...

Thanks cdguru for your insight from an author's perspective. It helps to understand where those discounts from paper vs. digital are calculated.

Stands to reason then that a digital copy costs considerably less. Which just proves the point I was trying to make. Certainly the costs don't justify a $14.95 'e-book' price tag, vs. a $17.95 paper copy.

Of course, while there is a premium for paper based books, if the e-reader market really wants to address the issue of declining sales, then someone should be taking a seriously hard look at how many e-books are priced. Knocking a couple of bucks off the price of a paper version, which has to be printed and then trucked out to retailers all over the world, vs. the costs of providing a digital download is larcenous, at best.