Mine also does blue-tooth to the HDTV.

That's funny, I could swear my hearing aid picks up sound in more than one direction. I can hear in front of me, behind me, to the side, not as much from the other side, as my thick skull and wet brain seem to do a handy job of blocking and absorbing sound from that direction. A hearing aid microphone might point mono-directionally, but is definitely not mono-directional.

It can also have numerous stored filters, easily switchable. Furthermore frequencies that have gone deaf can sometimes be compensated for by vibrationally triggering the hammer. I know they do this from the hearing tests they give me in figuring out what to program. Some of the tests send sound through my skull behind my ear, and not into my ear. But that's only because I have a functioning drum and hammer. Not everyone does. There is as much variation in hearing loss as in makes and models of cars.

You're oversimplifying. While it may take nothing to calculate the filter, each filter has to be individually programmed into a device built to fit in 1/4 of in space or less, including the battery, that has to be connected, and if not blue-tooth enabled physically so, to a computer or device to upload the programmed filter(s).

Not to mention it then has to be installed into a custom made plastic shell, which has to be thick and strong enough to not break by being held and manipulated daily for 365 days of the year for 3 years (the standard warranty on such a device), and continue to work for at least 17,520 hours. All of which again has to be .25" or less. Now, of course, that doesn't mean the prices are not inflated they certainly are, but perhaps not as much the questioner is leading /. to believe. Knee-jerk reactions. Personally, I would love to not spend the price of a car on a pair of hearing aids, but being able to swim AND hear my children at the same time? Priceless.

You do realize all these components are miniaturized so as to fit in or behind one's ear. This is not some commercially available chip that is .5" this is a device the entire contents of which may be .1" or less. I have one in my ear right now. A large part of the cost is these are not made in mass quantities to 10s of millions of people. It's partly market. It's partly miniaturization. These aren't simple filters. I hear in certain frequencies and amplitudes and the filter is preset at the manufacturer, and hand tuned by an actual person with a computer software package in a physical office. It often takes several minutes to do this. So the $$$$ goes to:
1) the manufacturer who is using the supply-demand pricing scheme,
2) the people who wrote the software to do the filtering,
3 the people in the factory/warehouse who operate the computer, to connect to and program each and every device, one at a time,
4) the people in the office who need to be there to fine tune and repair the devices, often with 3 year warranties fully paid for, shipping, parts and labor,
5) the cost of maintaining physical stores to distribute them.

Are they all making huge profits? Probably. But you're not going to see these selling for a few hundred dollars, because it would be a losing deal. It probably costs at least few hundred to make these, cover repairs, and cover the cost of selling them. They could definitely be cheaper. But you are all ignoring lots of factors. Each device is custom made to order, with different filters individually set. You can't mass produce this like an iPad or a Model T Ford. There has to be at least two people in the mix to hook the device up to a PC and set the filter. I will on average have a device in for fully paid repairs 3-10 during the life of the warranty. These are tiny devices and very delicate. Wires are almost microscopic, and soldered joints ARE microscopic.

But you can get a hearing aid for under $1000. Just not the fancy blue-tooth, enabled, digitally tuned, remotely programmable, waterproof to three feet version I have in my ear. If you are hard pressed for money and can't afford $1000-$1500 for a basic hearing aid, there are many source that will pay all or part of it for you.

Now you know more of the "rest of the story". It's not all black and white.

I for one welcome our very own WAL2000* home automation overlord...

As long as it isn't in any house I'm in. I don't want to be there when the house OS Blue Screens. It could give a whole new meaning to blue screen of death.

News flash: A family in New Jersey was locked inside their house, and killed by the house automation security system, due to a bug in the code that loads the defense protocols before loading the authorized users list. Oops!

* If you need this explained, please hand over your geeks creds at the door.

The reason Linux on the desktop isn't happening, is because MS controls that, with huge financial penalties for any manufacturer who install Linux on machines.

People don't necessarily care what OS they are using, as long as it is the one that comes installed on their shiny new computer. If you start shipping computers with no OS, and just a choice screen asking the user which OS to install, and giving the price of each, then you'll see Linux take off on the desktop in a hurry.

What a load of bull.

Let me sum up Barbara-not-Barbie's complaint about Linux.

Linux has no native SimCity4 release.

Based on her post, she claims to have years of experience with Linux, but hasn't learned how to export her data from her mail client, webbrowser, and other applications to import in a new distro. Nor knows how to create a home partition that doesn't get upgraded. But complains about problems when trying to use upgrade functions, that have warnings in the most pronounced ways possible to not use them in many places popular with Linux folks. Then when she couldn't come up with a problem for Mint invents some phony BS about them not knowing which direction they are going. WTF!? So, Ubuntu with it's near infinite flavors is more stable? I've not seen anything but rock-solid stability in Mint. Total BS. Barbara-not-Barbie gets -5 street cred for just the Mint comment. Then she slams Linux servers, which are so unstable they run half the Internet. Well, howdie do Bill! Glad to see you coming out of retirement, for another pot shot at Linux.

Sorry, this is all the troll feeding time I have.

Anyone who says they don't know which version to recommend is a troll.

That's my official stand.

If you're using Linux, and you wanted to introduce a friend to Linux, then it's only natural you'd recommend the distro you run. Since you'll be supporting it. Or a user-friendly Linux in the same "family", and is well known.

For desktops, there's: Ubuntu, RH, SuSE, and Mint at or near the top. All offering slight differences, and most from different "families".

Then of course there is DistroWatch.

Any Linux user worth his/her salt knows these things.

The BS that "there are over 100 distros, what do I recommend?", whining is disingenuous. There are over 100 different makers of golf clubs, which do I recommend. There are over a 100 different restaurants in my area which one do I recommend? Etc. As PJ would say, puh-lease!

My wife is a total PC illiterate, and yet she has no problem using a Linux desktop. Then of course you have all those millions using Linux in smartphones and what not. Linux, in my opinion is way more user-friendly than Windows. On several list I belong to which are geek oriented (mostly old people searching genealogy), I am constantly reminded of how useful Linux is, by calls fro help from Windows users. Those of us on the list using Macs and Linux offer help to get them to a point where they can get close to the same functionality out of Windows, that is just a no-brainer in Linux or Macs. Ever tried printing to a file, and having a usable (ie can open in an OTS app) in Out-of-the-Box Windows? I can't be done. You get [filename].prn. PRN? WTF? Where's the PDF print? Oh you have to buy something to get that.

Besides, the market isn't in Desktops anymore. That is so 20th Century. The future is portables, which has, umm..., no real Windows footprint. It's all Apple and Linux baby. So KDE and Gnome better get their shit together, and get ports done. Like yesterday.

Because, there are a lot of ill-considered, juvenile, sarcastic, vengeful, mean and stupid people out there. You may say something that someone takes the wrong way, and in an ill-considered heat of the moment does something stupid, ill-considered and mean that hurts you and your reputation for basically forever.

So, while I commend you on your restraint, it may all be for naught due to the acts of a single ill-considered act of someone who may be no less reasonable than you, but does something stupid and juvenile in a moment of passion. People have an enormous capacity to do really enormously stupid things. Just ask Bill and Ms. Lewinsky. Or those former Secret Service agents.

Plus it's a real good character building exercise to be anonymous and still act as responsibly as if you were putting your name to it. The person who can be just as kind to anyone while being a total stranger is a better person for it. I make no claims to such lofty goals. I do try.

I never worry about people trying to shame me or embarrass me about my posts. I use nicks mainly because I find the whole idea of splashing my name and actions all over the web like breadcrumbs creepy. I could care less what people think of me. I'm not here to please anyone.

It would upset me to lose out on a client or a job because of my postings on the Internet, but if it happened so be it. There are other clients and other jobs, and I wouldn't want to work for anyone making decisions based on things I've said or published on line. My real identity wouldn't be hard to figure out. I don't use a Tor sever or other anonymizing tools. Although it may come to that some day, based on the laws being passed by a bunch of idiotic jackasses in high places.

Plus, I don't like being told I have to submit all this information that some sites require in order to just make comments. It's one thing if you're buying something. But the right to be an anonymous is something my ancestors risked their lives and those of their families for. I'm not about to throw all that sacrifice in my ancestors long dead faces.

I'd be a much bigger rebel were it not for having to worry about raising my child. I'd probably be a major force in Anonymous.

Based on your inability to be sure if you could read data from servers on which you have root access makes me glad I don't have you or your company as a provider. As a person who has root level access to computers running cloud services, I can assure you, I CAN read every single unencrypted file on the server. As root, I have access to all the public keys and many private keys, and can unlock many of the encrypted files on the systems with those keys. Only uploaded files encrypted off-line, with keys and passwords I don't have access to, are safe from my prying eyes. But having access to them and having access to some of your encrypted passwords and possibly public/private keys, I have lots of data to use to crack open any secrets you upload to my servers.
You might want to consider a different line of work..

All I have to add is, politicians should beware the Ides of March. The blood of Patriots runs through many Americans. It's only a matter of time until the pot boils over into another Revolution.

Fat chance that will happen. The MPAA is not about to let any politician do anything even remotely intelligent like that. Although this move by Australia is hardly surprising post MegaUpload. So the Us Gov't is complaining that not enough countries are using US based cloud services so they don't need to deal with all that messy coordinated policing of all those darned filesharers outside the US who are singlehandedly killing the profits of those Golden Cows worshipped by Washington, DC (MPAA & RIAA)?

This looks like a job for ... Captain Obvious! Defender of the Unthinking and Free (DUF). Keeper of the Faith and Ultimate Defender (FUD) of the Idiot Populace (IP).

Furthermore the US does send aid to Europe, also. I know for a fact they sent money and humanitarian aid to Czechoslovakia, several years ago because of flooding.

Since you probably won't believe a US source. Here's proof that the US gives lots of aid everywhere.

World's most charitable countries. US is #1

Perhaps it can be explained this way.

1) MS has been historically a bully and no one likes bullies.
2) MS is still a bully, but now a bully with a gang of surrogates. Rather than doing the bullying out in the open they send their legions to do it.
3) MS has been two-faced. "Do as I say, not as I do".
4) MS is still two-faced.
5) MS has been a thief, stealing other people's code. There are many lawsuits proving this. Stacker compression being just one case.
6) MS has been petty to companies and yes the members of the press.
7) Members of the press have long memories.
8) This is getting to be a long list. you get the picture, I hope.
9) There are lots of features in MS products that are there, because exactly one person asked for it. Making programs bulky, and error prone.
10) MS products are millions of lines of code maintained with patch after patch over decades and reused, based on a design that lacked vision (which is admittedly a difficult thing to have, Steve Jobs was one of those few visionaries).

The lesson we learn here is if you do evil, lack vision, are too greedy, and don't play nice with others, people won't like you. Hence MS is only reaping the rewards of decades of arduous planting of seeds they have sown. Or you reap what you sow.