Marvel has been the little darling of the media recently. They took that loan to be able to create their own movies (instead of licensing deals with Sony, etc), and have more creative control over their properties. I think Iron Man was the first fruits of their efforts (that, or the 2nd Hulk, I can't remember).

Seeing how well they did with Iron Man, I would completely understand why Disney would want to get in on the action. With the financial backing of Disney, Marvel can take more risks and could produce a lot more mega-hits.

Of course, this all assumes Disney doesn't mess it all up.

I used dvrupgrade to upgrade our hard drive, but I could never get the MRV/HMO stuff to work correctly.

I eventually got tired messing around with the thing. We lost all our recordings after the drive failed (covered under their warranty), and had issues after the last big DirecTV Tivo update.

I've been tempted to try to re-enable all the hacks again, but I'm kind of tired of messing around with it.

Still have our DirectTV Tivo. Wish I could put my own content on it, or download content from the web, or even update it (330 days since our last successful update) over the network or VOIP. Still, I prefer it to anything else I've seen.

When the time comes to go to HD, unless something drastically changes in the meantime, I'll be following Tivo, not DirectTV.

Thank you for saying this, I was just going to mod you up, but I thought a reply would emphasize the point further.

I'd feel much better about what the FSF is doing if they weren't so intent on one target. Apple does just as much lock-in as it can and always seems to get a free pass. I seem to remember a new version of OSX is coming out, why no page about it's sins? iPhone? iTunes? Amazon's Kindle?

I'm not the biggest Microsoft fan, and they've been the bunt of many of my jokes, but it's hard to ignore the simple outright hate. From what I understand, the FSF is an organization that supposed to encourage positive growth in open software, not encourage negative hate towards certain companies.

I'd settle for just adding the ability to stream my own content onto the box.

Napster is only $5/month. No ads, unlimited listening, and I can choose which songs I want to play.

I like Pandora, but I'd rather have a couple extra audio ads inserted in for the free version.

I've been trying it out, and so far I'm liking it for the most part. I completely skipped Vista, so I must admit some of the features are new to me.

I do have some gripes here and there, but I can't help but think back to the days when I hated XP and swore I would never use that crayon-colored bloated OS. Eventually I had to use it, and I discovered the Windows Classic theme (is also included in Win7).

My biggest fear so far has been the upgrade policy for the RC. I know that it's a beta product, but from what I understand you have to reinstall the entire OS once the final product comes out. I would really love to see a simple upgrade path - enter a new license number, upgrade a few files, etc.

There always seems to be new breakthroughs in solar technology all the time. I wonder how much the cost of his original equipment is going to go down over the new few years. How much his original setup cost today?

He is obviously an early adopter, so I also wonder if he'll continue to just upgrade his equipment before getting a return from his investment. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, but the person who might best benefit from this experiment is his neighbor (assuming they get any old equipment).

Just curious - when you say "pull in an OFX from my bank", are you just logging into your bank's website and downloading the OFX, then importing into GnuCash? Or are you opening GnuCash and having it directly interact with the bank and pulling the OFX itself.

I'm just wondering, because I always thought that was a very convenient feature of Quicken, and it's kept me from even considering other options.

It prints on 2x3" full-color, sticky-back prints

I doubt anyone will take this camera seriously until it prints at least 4x6, non-sticky-back prints

(grammar corrected)

I wouldn't consider this post Flamebait. The parent pretty much described Office 2007's interface, which everyone was complaining about when it first came out.

On the subject of ribbons and tabs, I would favor the ribbon interface similar to Photoshop. For example, when you choose the cropping tool, there is a ribbon with all the options for cropping. However, I'm not too much of a fan of the Office 2007 interface. I think they did a poor job in the organization of the functions, and didn't even offer an option to switch interfaces.

How about an easier development platform for building cross-platform applications. That would make it easier for developers to sell apps that work for a larger audience. Why work so hard to move Windows apps over to Linux when you could encourage builders to build a dedicated-platform application with an environment that has this cross-platform functionality built in from the start.

(I have no intentions of starting a Java debate)

I think it would be interesting to see a competition where the goal would be to provide a practical efficient 4 door hatchback (i.e. Rabbit, Matrix, etc).

Each team would have certain rules to follow, such as limited to a 4-cylinder 120-hp engine, 4 seats, etc. Then they could be rated on a combination of efficiency, speed, comfort, and a number of other factors.

My point is that this seems to be the model that Lotus uses - put together the lightest car with a 4-cylinder engine. I love to see companies like Tesla challenging the market, but I'd also like to see challengers pushing what we currently have to it's limits.