There's also advances in battery technology. I'm interested in this:
http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/liquid-batteries-0214.html

I love my Win7 Media Center solution. The PC is located in my living room, and I have a linksys DMA-2100 Media Center Extender in the bedroom. Using a Hauppauge dual cablecard tuner it replaced my ($20 a month) DVR and a cable box ($10 a month) from my house. It isn't 100% perfect, there's a very occasional issue with the Tuning Adapter (for SDV channels) which is being ironed out, but all in all it's wonderful. The media center PC is just a cheap small form factor Dell with a low end C2D in it. Using onboard video, it plays 1080P content without issue.

I have all of the DVR functionality I had before, but with practically unlimited storage. I can pause recorded shows and resume from my bedroom. The Media Center interface meets my household's requirement (high Wife Acceptance Factor is a necessity,) and I have Parental Controls that I require.

That takes care of my cable TV options - which I require because I watch live Premier League soccer games on Fox Soccer Channel.

The rest of the setup is MediaBrowser for movies and all other content, and Remote Potato for remote connectivity, scheduling and streaming. I have a better solution than I was paying Time Warner for, and it will have paid for itself after 5 months.

It's astonishing to me that Microsoft didn't throw their weight behind this solution. I know you can use xbox 360s as extenders, but I like my silent, tiny Linksys. This is the start of a completely integrated home media solution.

-Simon

This is precisely how the Fisker Karma works. It has a 2 liter gas engine in it which is simply turns a generator to recharge the battery packs, extending its range.

It's refreshing to hear a reasonable voice in this discussion. I get the distinct impression a significant of the negative comments (bashing the owner for being an idiot for the spectacularly foolish act of parking his car somewhere safely for a couple of months while his house was being remodeled) are astroturfing by Tesla PR.

I would say it very much is 'bricked.' It is nothing but an admittedly pretty paperweight until you hand over ~$40K for non-warranty covered (or insurable) battery replacement. You can't engage 'tow mode,' it's a brick.

The Jalopnik articles go into this in detail, but it appears the Fisker Karma uses the same battery technology, so this will affect other modern EVs.

-Simon

Tesla Roadsters have a 'Tow' mode which permits the wheels to rotate freely. In this bricked case, the tow mode is not available so the vehicle has to be dragged onto a flatbed.

Equal Protection.
Speech.
Corporate spending on political campaigns.

I'm pretty sure Sprint doesn't meter data either. They proudly proclaim the fact on their ads that they have truly unlimited data.
-ST

Real 'Loser Pays' would even the playing field and reduce the number of unwinnable, frivolous lawsuits.

-S

No, sales tax is a regressive tax. If I make 200M a year and you make 20K a year we both pay the same dollar in taxes for a happy meal. The tax burden is higher on you, by percentage of income, than me. This is the definition of regressive taxation.

Progressive taxes are EXCLUSIVELY based on income - see European countries issuing amazing fines for speeding, because income is a factor in the fine calculation.

-S

Ugh, I'm in the same boat. It's because Apps accounts don't support Google Profiles - required for G+ and Buzz.

Additionally, I've been invited, but haven't received an email. I've read others who also have Apps accounts whose invitation emails simply never arrive. Weird.

(First draft, go easy on me)

We recognize that this company is at the most important single moment since its inception. We have created spectacular, world-leading, revolutionary products before and we will do so again. We promise to go back to basics, to only ship complete, innovative communication technology.

We will scout, develop and promote the best possible leadership to ensure that our primary goal - delivering exciting, world class mobile technology - is met now and in the future.

We will create a new, senior position for "Chief Creative Officer." We want to return to the helm of modern communications technology and that requires a strong voice of creativity and imagination. We must return to the forefront of innovation, and we must make that happen to survive in this modern world.

We will make every attempt to immediately open up communication channels between our management, engineers, problem-solvers and developers to ensure that the best ideas are seized upon, and every product meets our most stringent quality requirements.

The fact that communication is not open, direct and immediate within a world leading communications company is embarrassing and must be resolved.

We look forward to hearing your comments, ideas and frustrations and we can't wait to reveal to you great new products.

-RIM management

Surely this was the first ever legitimate use of the phrase "cunning linguist"

I don't know who to root for here. It's a group of really, really, really evil companys against a merely really, really evil company.

Am I supposed to root for Time Warner? Really?!

+1 for MediaBrowser, if you're on a Windows Media Center machine. A combination of MediaBrowser and automated TV downloads via your BT client of choice is a terrific cable TV replacement. It handles TV and Movies equally well. As the parent mentioned, it's great to look at the actors on a movie, click on their photo and bring up a list of other movies in which they appeared.

I'm a fan of Media Center Master for cleaning up the metadata, particularly for name duplicates and hard to find stuff like kids specials. It's easy to create/attach cover art for really obscure stuff, or your own home movies.

I love showing off my HTPC solution, it provides a great look and feel, it's got enough nerd-intrigue to get me interested, and it has a tremendous WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) so it actually gets used. One thing most people don't consider is separating media for me and the wife (True Blood, Spartacus, etc) from the kids (Dora, Thomas, etc) without duplicating hardware. MediaBrowser handles it with ratings, I specify a maximum rating for media which the kids can watch, anything beyond that requires a PIN for it to even show up in the list.

-S

This!

This is what I do for a living, I'm a backup admin for a fairly large investment bank in Dallas, and it's a hard, stressful, painful but often rewarding job.

It's astonishing to me the way backups/redundancy/off-site protection is marginalized and otherwise ignored at businesses around the world.

I can't stress highly enough how necessary routine audits are. Your backup is useless if you can't immediately produce detailed documentation on how it works, distribute reports for internal self-audit, and perform frequent tests to ensure the recoverability of your data.

-S