Mark

How to fix the economy in 6 simple steps:

1) Give me a Roku Netflix Player.

2) In order to use aforementioned Roku Netflix Player, I will be forced to finally get off my butt and replace the TV that I sold on Craigslist months ago (planning to replace it with a sweet new plasma model that I still haven't bought because I got laid off a few days later).

3) People who see me walking into the electronics superstore to buy my new TV will be mesmerized by my rugged good looks, and will follow me into the store to make purchases of their own. ("Look at him," they'll murmur to each other. "That looks like a man who owns a Roku Netflix Player!")

4) The sudden influx of cash into the electronics market will convince skittish Wall Street investors to set their new Ponzi scheme plans to the side for a moment and invest instead in a suite of green energy and Internet startups.

5) These startups will grow into worldwide titans that will grab the world by the balls and force it to make obeisance to American industrial might.

6) Profit!

Gears of War isn't a first-party title. It was developed by Epic, which isn't owned by Microsoft. Microsoft is merely the publisher of that title.

If true, the really funny thing here is Comcast has a virtual monopoly in the Seattle area, so very few Microsoft employees would be able to sign up for the service. You'd think they'd at least negotiate an agreement with a local cable provider!

You can do that? You can take another company's product and patent a potential future version of it? Cool! Dibs on the patent for the 3D iPod!

I've always wondered -- do airline executives look at pictures of these proposed amenities for laughs as they cram more and more people into coach, or do they never consider them in the first place? Most airlines haven't even managed to put personal video screens in seatbacks, after all; I don't think we can expect much better than that for many years to come.

"Clever criminals" is generally an oxymoron. Criminals tend to be idiots; that's what leads them to a life of crime in the first place.

If the technique does prove viable, I'd expect another use of it by law enforcement agencies: to track down the anonymous someones who snapped shots of police brutality and the like. Even the thought that the government could find you based on your digital camera's "signature" could have a chilling effect.