Who dials telephones anymore? And who does so often enough to (A) worry about micro-optimizing this part of their life, and (B) actually prefer the telephone pattern to a ten-key calculator or keyboard?

You could run Mono on a *new* iPod Touch for the same price as just the combination of the whimpy CPU and display modules. And if you do, you'll get wifi, accelerometer, bluetooth, camera, video, Flash, battery, audio i/o, and a few switches thrown in for free. I don't understand the target market here, unless it's people who want to feel like they are low-level breadboarding gods because they plugged a ribbon cable into something and compiled some C# on it.

Your use cases for expected user-generated content include "user entry, correcting, searching, commentary, tagging, redistribution and so on, of such material."

Scanning of PD works, OCR, and making corrections to that data is just data, and you can't copyright facts or short phrases, titles, etc.

"Commentary" can enjoy copyright protection, so the CC licenses can be applied and each user would retain copyright of his commentary either under his real name or pen name.

But if the commentary is *editable* by other users, like Wikipedia, then the best course of action would probably be to treat the commentary as a "collective work." Collective works can still be licensed under CC without naming all of the individuals, but you'd have to assign an author of some sort--maybe the original author, regardless how much is edited later.

While individual tags are just facts, the entire *database* of tags may meet the "originality" test for copyright protection. But in the case of a database, there must be a single copyright holder (like with the collective work), and you can only file for 3 months of database changes at a time.

IANAL/TINLA

Yes, in a heartbeat. Especially when what replaces the ads is actually entertaining.

I've been to the movie theater in question. It was well worth the money, a great movie experience.

While it's not precisely the same thing, DISH Network's Sling Adapter allows users to watch anything recorded on the DVR, or to tune the DVR and watch live TV, on their PC (including OS X), iPad, or iPhone, regardless of their location (provided there's adequate bandwidth). It's $100 and has no service fee.

Using it within my house is great, I can carry my iPad around the house or the yard while watching TV. So far, attempts to use hotel wifi when I'm away have been a bust, the connections I've gotten just aren't fast enough, but more stable connections work just fine.

I know TW's product is a little different, but frankly, I like DISH's approach better. I rarely watch anything live, so having full access to my DVR's contents adds a lot of value.

I don't trust any form of unlimited power: government, corporations, churches, unions, mobs, free markets, or individuals.I don't think any of them should be in charge of the Internet, or society at large. But I do believe in pitting them against one another where needed, to balance each other's ability to control my life.

I give telcos the exclusive right to run wires through my back yard and shoot electrons through the air on limited frequencies. In return, I reasonably demand that if I'm paying for their services, I can connect who whoever they hell I want to without them degrading the connection because they want to sell me a competing service.

I don't let the water company charge me one rate for water to fill my pool, and another to brew my beer. I pay for water to be delivered, and it's none of their damned business who I use it. Same for electricity. Telcos can charge me for usage, but should not be able to use their quasi-government role as a monopoly utility service to turn the Internet back into Cable TV.

When the choice is between living without Internet access, or choosing a watered-down version, there really isn't an economically viable choice for most people, any more than most people could reasonably choose to live without water, electricity, or roads. You can survive, but you can't compete. So we can't unplug, nor can we vote with our wallets.. A natural monopoly requires a balancing force, because there is no free market. The government is the way that democratic societies choose to impose the will of the people when the market cannot.

Some elements I think might be worth looking at:

- Google Search Appliance can handle the multimedia and other file indexing.
- For desktops, unless you NEED laptops, the Mac Mini + a keyboard, mouse, and non-Apple monitor is a great choice. Runs OS X, Linux, or Windows.
- GMail for corporate email.
- For file, web, and database servers, Linux.
- Colocate your servers elsewhere and use VPN. No need to worry about scaling, fire suppression, security, etc.
- Possibly a local cache server, since you're doing multimedia.
- Buy servers, don't piece them together yourself. Get on-site support. Otherwise that's you.
- Tape backup sucks. Backup over the Internet to a backup server in a colo center somewhere else.

I use Zenio on my iPhone, iPad, and Mac for several magazine subscriptions. Works great, and I read my magazines more consistently than before, because the iPad is much more likely to be within reach when I have a few minutes to fill.

Short term: have the city attorney read the franchise agreement, hopefully they'll find good evidence that Comcast's ability to perform on its end is not the city's problem. Tell Comcast to take their $96 bill, shove it up their antenna, and send you the boxes.

Better: turn off the cable and give first responders a good ATSC antenna, a Wii, and a Netflix subscription. Ok, that's probably more expensive even if Netflix gives you a sweet deal, and there's the bandwidth, but it's the principle dammit!

Long term: 1982? Seriously? Time to re-negotiate the CATV contract. Require them to provide all non-premium digital TV over clear QAM so normal digital-ready HDTVs can pick it up, both for your sake, and for the citizens.

The nice thing about USB drives is that they *can* be reused (like you're doing now).

So, do your Christmas thing, but included with each card, send a list of the charities above who could also use the cards, and instructions on how to format and send the drives.

After all, Christmas is all above giving, and if they want to re-read your card, they can just copy the drive to their computer.

That way, you still get to send a spiffy card, and the blind kids in Australia still get to listen to a book (though, realistically, postage would be more expensive than sending a donation to buy a new drive in some cases).

To the charities above: try contacting companies who make trash-n-trinkets for conventions, etc. They probably have gobs of extras that can't be resold because of being already customized, or having outdated sizes (32MB is still plenty for a kid to write a few school papers on).

Automobile touch-up paint. $5, paint it right over the lens.

You can probably even find a match for most common laptops if you look hard enough.

The entire argument in the OP is silly.

Using my MBP for retouching (it's even the old matte style) would be almost as silly as using my iPhone display.

Laptops are small, have inconsistent brightness, inconsistent ambient lighting, poor angle, and (commonly) 6-bit displays.

The matte and glossy both are fine for basic editing and everything else I do on a laptop. Retouching only happens in my studio, where I have full control over ambient light color and intensity, and a hardware-calibrated, 8-bit, 24" display running at 1920x1200 (and on my Mac Pro, not my MBP laptop--MBP has great speed for a laptop, but it doesn't touch the desktop when it comes to 200-MB Photoshop files).

Use tools the way they were intended to be used.