Just because you declare ahead of time that you're going to be anti-competitive doesn't make it legal.

The Nokia product brand placement is nothing compared to Pacific Bell in Star Trek IV although I don't know if Paramount was paid for this:

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/File:Pacific_Bell_Yellow_Pages.jpg

Ugliness is a subjective measure. The Prius has sold well enough, even after the US federal tax break expiration, to prove that point. What isn't subjective is the fact that its shape allows it to have a drag coefficient of .26. The only mass-produced car I know of that was recently made to have a lower Cd was the Insight, and its overall shape is very similar. Look at the 2010 Insight, and I doubt there's any way you can deny that. The 2010 Prius will have a .25 Cd. It may not look very sporty to you, but it's definitely very aerodynamic.

A few of facts about diesel:

1) From the Union of Concerned Scientists (http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_vehicles/technologies_and_fuels/gasoline_and_diesel/the-diesel-dilemma-diesels.html): "Since Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards give credit to vehicles based on fuel economy rather than oil use, and a gallon of low-sulfur diesel fuel requires 25 percent more oil than a gallon of low-sulfur reformulated gasoline, putting more diesel vehicles on the road without also raising fuel economy standards could actually increase U.S. oil dependence."

2) Diesel is about 19% more expensive per gallon when compared to gasoline in the US at the moment (http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/oog/info/gdu/gasdiesel.asp). This is a US-centric fact, though. IIRC, some countries subsidize diesel. That's one reason why diesel is more popular in Europe.

3) A lot of diesel proponents point to the Jetta TDi as their vehicle of choice over the Prius. They were making claims that it would get 60 MPG. In a Popular Mechanics article last September (http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/new_cars/4284188.html), it was shown that the Prius significantly beat the Jetta TDI in city driving (44.7 to 32), and the Jetta TDi was only slightly better than the Prius in highway driving (45.4 to 44.8).

As a dev, I'm holding pattern until the SDK has bluetooth support, specifically I need access to rfcomm. Hopefully, we'll get it with the arrival of cupcake.

That's exactly what I was thinking as I was going to sleep last night. The ambient backlight is too bright even in night mode. I usually have to turn my chumby so it faces away from my bed, but that could just be me because I prefer to sleep in pitch black.

Besides that, it does exactly what I wanted out of it: the ability to wake me up to music from an internet radio station because radio reception in my house sucks. This made more sense than buying a 2nd squeezebox + speakers for my bedroom.

why would you call me a really old Intel processor?

There are ads on Engadget?!

The current bid on eBay is $86 more than the price originally paid (and the original price of 179 included shipping). I already have a Chumby, but if I were still looking for one, I'd wait until the official launch because it'll be pretty soon anyway and the current firmware release is missing a lot of features right now. It's simply not worth paying extra for a used Chumby.

I have a chumby, and I'm pretty sure the ambient light sensor was removed from the production version. I think it's in the changelog somewhere. One of the requests made by users was the ability to set the brightness of the backlight according to the time of the day.