That, and make it more require more paperwork (take a look at the new 1040 form). In past years, filing my taxes was just a simple 1040EZ with the property tax crap and the state tax forms, but since all the tax stuff was rewritten, for 2018 (at least), filing through TurboTax required a bunch of forms and crap that I never needed before (according to it, it's because my job (at the time) had a 401K, though another job from 2006 thru 2012 also had a 401K, and didn't need those extra forms), and in order to file those forms, I had to upgrade from the free package thingy, and it's like $40 to file state, to upgrade to file the extra forms was another $59 or something. If I wanted to mail it in, I'd end up printing a novels-worth of paperwork just in forms, not to mention the bible-worth of tables and instructions to figure out the mess it has all become. So... tax our income, tax stuff we need, tax cars and gas so we can get to our jobs to earn that income in the first place, and end up making it near impossible to file our taxes free... what's wrong with this picture? There should be a way to claim (at a minimum) those charges and get them as refunds, if not outright get in on a lawsuit for false or misdirected advertising to get that money back and make it easier to completely file for free permanently online. Of course, I'd like to see the tax reform stuff make it easier to file in general for a change, regardless of how you want to file... compare the 1040EZ of past years to the present 1040 form.

In Grand Rapids, we're served by Comcast, and I can access it just fine without using a proxy.

I thought that the moment I saw this headline. Wonder is they'll give it the undercarriage weapons array that the ones in the show had.

Not tooting my own horn, but I can recommend checking out The Geek Group (http://thegeekgroup.org). They're a group in Grand Rapids, Michigan that operates a 47k sq. ft. facility where they do pretty much all geeky things (operate the largest currently functioning Tesla Coils, run a trio of CNC machines, a full laser lab, chemistry lab, computer lab (repair and sales), high energy physics lab, recording studio, A/V editing facility, electronics lab & museum). They also run a couple YouTube channels (http://youtube.com/thegeekgroup http://youtube.com/captainboden & http://youtube.com/chrisboden -- the founder's vlog).

It should be the finale for the next Burning Man... bring out The Man (with a giant grounding rod built into him), then truck over the towers and light him up with lightning!

I have chemical pumps at work that use Tesla Turbines... and magnetic driveshafts (magnet surrounded by another magnet). Pacemaker users beware (they even have warning stickers)! They're even vernier adjustable down to 1 gram depending on the viscosity and temperature of the chemical.

Now, if Sci-Fi/SyFy could only come up with an original idea for a show instead of ripping off other shows... Warehouse 13 is just a slightly modified version of Fringe, and from the miniscule seconds that I watch of SyFy as I channel surf right past it, it seems pretty much everything on it is a horrible rip-off of some other show.

Where is this happening? The only time a YT video starts for me is when I click it (or have it fullscreened when the vid is in a playlist or is part of a person's channel). Although, I will gripe that lately, YT doesn't seem to have the same bandwidth it used to... even 240P seems to buffer all the time... though, given who my ISP is (Charter), it could be fubarred towards my end, too.

They won't throttle your bandwidth or disconnect you, they'll just sue the pants off you... they'll just do it a lot faster now that they'll have a direct hotline to your ISP's customer database.

Worse than reading a twenty page article written in 1337!

Yeah... I always liked that I could just add stuff to my DVD queue regardless and if I logged in and saw that it had a 'Play' button, could just watch it instantly. Plus, you could search for a movie/show (let's say 'Lost') and see without going to two sites that all seasons are available on DVD and Seasons 1-5 are available on streaming... that way, you could watch the streaming stuff and queue the 6th season in the meantime (and, if you play your cards right, have the first disc of season 6 in your hands when you get done with season 5). Now, it's going to be: check Netflix, search for whatever, it's not there, check Qwikster, search for same thing, queue it, lost interest in same thing but gain interest in some random anime on Netflix that you want to copy, go mad from all the switching of windows that this all causes, forget that the first thing is in your Qwikster queue and has now arrived even though you don't want it, and in the turnaround time you develop a branched-off interest in some random Indie movie that's available on both... you get the point. It's safe to assume that people will eventually figure out how to use copy-paste and Notepad to look up stuff on both, but the hassle that the whole shmeer becomes is going to become too much. What damage would they incur if they integrated both while having seperate websites? Sure, it might take ten lines of code, but then people will stop whining and then searches on one site will return crosslinked results on both. Win-win situation there. Now, if only they would listen to what they bill-payers are saying... that would really be something there.

As far as the TV/Laptop Frankenstein System... that would be why nerds have regular HTPCs... mine plays Blu-Rays, YouTube, regular DVDs (upconverted to dang near Blu-Ray), has full access to the entire media catalog on this computer (and on the laptop over wireless) over gigabit, crunches SETI, and outputs all that over 720P (1080I makes the letters too small for my 20/400 eyesight to read). No funky PSN or proprietary hardware... if I need RAM or a HDD added, I drop some coin, slap the bugger in and that's that... if I lose media connectivity, it's not because my PSN account was hacked while I was sleeping.

Now... if there only was a viable alternative (DVD-by-mail AND streaming). Looks like people are just gonna have to swamp Amazon's used DVD selections.

And... by having to negotiate two seperate contracts, which means two seperate licensing fees, that way you can double-dip, much the same way they did with the LOTR trilogy. Sure, there's probably a complete edition out there, but who wants to search that much... just buy each new set of discs that has a little more new content on it and eventually you'll have all the behind-the-scenes content.