@writeinC And that's just the point... Ubuntu is great for a non-tech person. I had a customer who was not too tech saavy (an Administrative Assistant) and I switched her to Ubuntu back at 6.06LTS... she's loved it ever since and uses it daily. She never needs to go to the terminal for anything, since there is nothing she needs to change... it "just works". I setup the OS on her old Emachine that refused to run Windows properly for her (it would always break down). She's upgraded it through the builtin upgrade routines and was last running 9.04 with no issues.

A non-tech-saavy person is a great person for Ubuntu, since they don't have to tinker with anything at all. I'll admit, if something goes wrong or isn't supported, then you may need the terminal and whatnot, but it's almost the same story with windows, except that you have to dig into the registry there. Granted, there are more people to help when you deal with windows problems (not that all of them are really helpful) so that's another challenge, but in 3+ years, the only thing she "broke" was her printer because she didn't use Ubuntu's built-in installer for the drivers on it... she was trying to compile and stuff, according to the Brother website (morons shouldn't be telling the user to do that!). In the end, it was an easy fix when you told Ubuntu to install it... it just worked, and was far easier than Brother's instructions.

Does this affect the Avast5 beta (as pictured) or the older Avast 4.8 as well?

@(Unverified) So true... just a stunt. Why else would they send you to an "are you sure" type page if you click "roll over".

Frankly, I wish the cablecos would roll over and die... they screwed us with cablecards, encryption waivers for ClearQAM, and now they are trying to get SOC... all while raising rates and killing imagine quality by overcompressing everything. The best thing the FCC can do is to enforce line-sharing... that will whip them into shape FAST. I hope it happens.

@ATimson : Darn right. Notice that the TWC site doesn't tell you WHICH channels are jacking rates on them. If it's channels I don't watch, then yes, they should roll over and then drop the channel (I never wanted it anyway)... that's how TWC can exercise their leverage on the matter. They don't need us to do it for them, they have the leverage... they just think we want 10 shopping channels, 5 religious ones, etc... when the fact is only a small minority watch those channels.

Ala carte baby... let the stragglers die (or let the stragglers charge more if the people watching REALLY want it). IE, let the market decide.

The company I work for is also still using IE6... heck, they're still running XP SP2 here... yeesh.

As I recall, some of our daily operational software is web-based, and that is written for IE6, specifically... hence IE7 won't work. Maybe IE8 in IE6-mode can work... I'd like to think someone is testing that, but I won't hold my breath.

@Jeff Kibuule: Agreed. PS3 makes for an excellent, upgradable BD player. The problem with any normal one is that since vendors drop support for standalones all the time (yearly, I expect) you'll eventually lose the ability to use any new features when they come out. Since the PS3 will continue to be upgraded (since it's more than just a BD-player, and has gaming in mind) I'll never recommend a cheaper device with limited life... and that's why I, too, have a PS3.

It's not a lie, techincally.

The problem is that they are asking for SOC today, only for new content. Fine. However, what's to say they don't lock it down later on? Basically, it's the first step towards more control... just because they say they won't do it TODAY doesn't mean they won't do it forever.

A perfect example is QAM digital cable. Now that the cable industry has their waiver for little crappy DTA boxes, those of us in far-away areas who had watched OTA signals come over the cable line as ClearQAM are now being screwed out of that. Even though the Telecom act supposedly says they cannot degrade or encrypt the local channels, the waiver grants them this ability, and most carriers are doing it immediately. Sure, they give you a free DTA box (for now) but it spits out an RF-modulated analog signal that is certainly "degrading" the qualty from ClearQAM. And why are they doing this? "Theft"... how can you steal a local-channel's HD feed is beyond me, but that's what they are claiming.

Now, I have no problem with them locking down their paid channels, but the FCC and the cable industry have screwed this up nicely to have QAM die a horrible death. Fact is QAM could have been a great way to ensure consumers get good digital signal, while allowing the cablecos to remove analog... but no one thought of that, did they?

So, "today" it might be a "lie" but history has shown that this is just the start of the grab... if we don't stop it now, we won't be able to stop it later.

Besides which, the claim is that the analog outputs promote piracy. Who is pirating movies via analog these days? Most of the pirated content are digital rips from theaters or screener copies... so how does SOC solve that? It doesn't... so who's lying now?

Persistent logins... ahhh... so nice.

I'm not quite as big of a fan of the larger pictures everywhere, but I'll just get used to it, I suppose :)

Great work!

Not quite... the point is that the programmer can use the SD for extra data - the user doesn't have to do this work of segregating the data, if the programmer does his/her job. Hackers can certainly do more with the App2SD software, but it's not required.

That being said, from what I'm reading, apps on Android are tiny... one user says his average is 500-800k, which means you could easily install over 300 apps... hardly limiting: http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1584434 (see posts 4 and 7)

This is a non-issue... FUD

Brad is correct. After a long line of questioning to the FCC, apparently the waiver allows the cable cos to encrypt ALL channels, as long as they provide (a few?) boxes to decrypt the signal. In an email I just got back from the FCC:

"Thank you for your additional concerns.

Since your cable company plans to transition to a digital-only service, (which includes the basic service tier plus additional digital cable channels), cable providers may often insist that a set top box from the cable company is required to watch any digital cable channels including unencrypted channels.

Currently, basic tier subscribers, and some other subscribers who have additional television sets without set top boxes, can rely on the digital cable tuner in their television to receive basic tier programming without the need to obtain a box. However, if the basic tier is encrypted, these subscribers would need to obtain additional equipment (either a set-top box or a CableCARD).

You have noted that the cable company plans to provide free transport adapters (low-end cable boxes, as per the FCC waiver http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-09-1854A1.pdf, which will allow you to unencrypt the basic service tier.

Thank you for your inquiry.

Brenda Althoff
Consumer Advocate and Mediation Specialist
Federal Communications Commission
Consumer and Governmental Affairs Bureau"

Nice. So although the cableco can provide a crappy RF box for these channels, you have the distinct "advantage" of losing the QAM signal completely, and hence get a low-res, SD, RF modulated signal. Great job, FCC.