The Lifelong Learner         by Stanley Kubasek | About Me |

I just bought a MacBook Pro and I started using it for the 1-st time yesterday. First impressions? I like it. It has great looks and so far it's fairly easy to use. It's fast!

But it's different! I am used to Windows and I'll have to adjust and find ways to do some more complicated things.

Wireless It has a Wireless N Wi-Fi receiver. It's much faster and can reach X-times as wide as G. It's the next generation Wi-Fi -- but it takes forever to actually get approved by IEEE. I also liked it when it discovered my home network right when I was configuring the machine for first time. I was on the network in no time. No technical expertise required.

Keyboard It's just beautiful. I love typing using it. The backlight is something really special.

Installing Applications Seems to simple to be true. I'm a big confused on how things work. I was able to install Skype and Firefox with no issues but I'll have to get more comfortable with the process.

Files - Hard Disk I'm a bit confused where everything is located. Do I need to know? Not for now. :-) I'll figure it out.

Users I setup two accounts on the computer. However, when I logoff, it seems that I have to shut down all applications. It can't be true. I want my wife to login, do her stuff, etc, but I don't want to close my open apps. It must be something I'm doing wrong.

Second OS I heard and have seen how you can run another operating system in parallel. I would love to use XP and Linux. Boot Camp allows you do that, but I think I might have to buy VMare to do that effectively. Will have to investigate about this.

Overall, it's a thing of beauty. Great looks, elegant design. It's a Mac! :-)

After reading this article in the morning today, Firefox 3 beta 5: How many connections is too many? by Ed Burnette, I decided to try the latest beta of Firefox. I am pleasantly surprised! Speed improvement is phenomenal! Web pages load much more quickly.

I decided to switch at work because my FF was crashing several times a day (probably because of one of the extensions that I have).

Give FF 3 a try, I bet you'll be surprised! You can download it here.

Let the browser war begin! -- FF 3, IE 8, Safari, Opera

WARNING: a lot of your extensions will not work. Why? Because they're not yet compatible with FF 3.

Related
Dev Connection, Ed Burnette's blog -- Ed's tech blog is pretty good, I like it

A great overview of global browser usage. Take a look at how many people use each browser, what operating system, which country, and what resolution. A great overall view of the internet usage world.

Firefox usage is around 25%! Wow! Let the browser wars go on! (I'm happy) :-)

Reference
W3Counter - Global Web Stats

Related
Browser Statistics, W3Schools

I usually have a list of must have products of the previous year. This year I did not really have a good list. It’s mostly the old software that I use. I do have a list of Firefox extensions that I would have hard time living without. Here they are.

Adblock Plus
Removes the ads. A great extension. (Make sure you select a white list to keep updating the ad list.)

IE Tab
There are still (!) some websites that work only in IE. A must extension have for now.

Last Tab
Very useful extension if you are used to Alt-Tab shortcut – you use Ctr-Tab to switch to last tab. (I feel this should be a built-in feature.)

del.icio.us
Great way to store/share/search bookmarks.

WebDeveloper
If you are a webmaster/web developer, this is a must.

Download Statusbar
Enhances the built-in downloader.

ShowIP
Useful extension when you’re doing web development work.

Answers
Good way to look up definitions.

I tried many others but the above I use all the time.

There are some extensions that are very popular but I don’t seem to get why. For instance, FlashGot. I installed it many times but never seem use it. :-(

If you are using Adobe Reader 8.0, one the things that you will notice is “Updater5” folder in the “My Documents” folder. That’s annoying. It’s an empty folder that takes valuable real estate. I hate that.

It turns out that there is an easy way to remove it. Here’s how:

Go to Help->Check For Update and then click on Preferences. You can change the location of the “Updater5” folder there. Simple enough, but why Adobe does not pick a location in the Program Files directory?!

Test your typing speed!

Try it several times and average it out. I tried it twice and my speed is around 80 words per minute. Not too bad, but could do a lot better. I guess I need to improve, but I think I keep improving year by year.

How fast can you type?

Reference
How fast can you type, Otaku Cedric's post -- that's how I learned about this tool

If you've been following the real estate in US, you must have at least heard these names (if not tried them). If not, I'm going to recommend these as helpful to asses the housing market, and a great help in finding your next house.

They are all real estate tools: interactive websites that allow you to search and value the houses on the market in your area, and in United States overall.

Trulia.com. It is a site that I like the most. This site puts together listings of houses for sale in your area, as well as in the whole US (noticed this last week). As I take a look at houses for sale on my street (by walking or driving), I see 3 houses for sale; on Trulia I only find 1, but there are still a lot of houses listed in the area. There are a lot of listings and you get get a good indication of what the houses are going for. They also have email updates. I just signed up for one: they'll send me a weekly update of houses for a town in NJ.

RealEstateABC.com. I just discovered this site today and I'm already liking it. Why? Because it is putting the real information, information released by the authorities. How can I tell? I can see my parents house there and it displays the actual amount the house sold for. Wow. My parents bought a house in Garfield, NJ for $253K two years ago. Now the house can go for $350-400K. I think it is unrealistic that the houses went up so fast (has your pay increased 50-100%?).

Zillow.com. The site looks very good. However, I'm not so sure that it does a good job (at least not in Garfield). On the same site, my parents house is listed for $118K. They say it's the tax-assessed value. Do I want to see that? How does it help me? Not sure. But I hear that in other areas it displays the actual value. Try it out.

Out of the three above, I prefer Trulia and RealEstateABC. Those tools are very cool. They give me the ability to see how much the house on the street is listed for, and then how much it actually sold. Those are tools that Internet savvy users have waited for. Finally they're arriving. (We'll see more of those, I think.)

Reference
Real-Estate Snoops Use Sites To Find Prices of Others' Houses, The Wall Street Journal Online

House prices are ridiculous in New Jersey. Everyone knows that. I would like to buy a one family house in Rutherford, NJ (I really like that town), or somewhere else in Bergen County. I'm willing to pay up to $300K. I know I cannot find anything now, so I'm willing to wait couple of years (hey, maybe my income will double :-)). I'd say that my wife and I have time until 2010. I think by then house prices will be lower in the area (I think we have a chance in 2007 or 2008). So how much would I have to pay on $300K at 6.5%? According to this mortgage calculator (found it through WSJ), my monthly payments would be $1900. Tha's a lot, but I'm paying $1050 for rent each month now. :-(

Reference
Morgage Calculator, Homestore.com

Technology is advancing very fast. Just look back couple of years: a lot of things changed. What's in store for 2006? I personally think that we're up for a super-fast internet -- coming from a fiber-optic connection (see my previous artice on it, Fiber To Your Home) -- that will enable us to watch HDTV, make super-high quality video calls, and more. Much more, actually. It, eventually, will become like an industry of its own. I think this technology will be in the driver's seat in 2006. What else? I could find other technologies like that, but I found an excellent article from a Popular Mechanics magazine that lists the 15 New Concepts that will come to fruition in 2006. Excellent article.

What are some of the most exciting technologies listed there?
- Internet Protocol Television (IPTV)
- NAND Flash Memory
- Micro Fuel Cells
- Coal Gasification
- FIBER-TO-THE-HOME
- Mobile WiMAX

Reference
15 Tech Concepts You'll Need To Know In 2006: Popular Mechanics, January 2006

If you've been using the popular Alt+Tab shortcut to switch between open programs, there is a better way. If you've been trying to find an easy way to minimize all programs to tray (oh, I can't tell you how many times I've tried to do that), now there is way. What is it? TaskSwitchXP Pro 2.0 from Microsoft.

I've been using TaskSwitchXP for couple of weeks and I love it! It's an improvement of the old way of switching tasks. It shows you a preview of the screen, and it gives you a more descriptive list. See screenshot, below.

How do I get it? Download it from ntwind.com.

I heard about this from the Coding Horror blog. He has a nice description of what the program does. If you want to know more details how to use it, read it.

Be more productive. Use Task Switch.

Reference
ALT+TAB Extreme -- Coding Horror entry about TaskSwitchPro
Quick Start Guide

I've been receiving the CrossRoads Newsletter for quite some time. It's a newsletter for job seekers. It contains very good articles on resume tune-up, interviewing, job-searching tips, and more. It is very good.

Last December, I was preparing for an interview. I was looking for some good interviewing articles. Sure enough, I found them on net-temps.com. They have the newsletter articles archived. Did they help me? Sure. I felt more confident. I must have been convincing since I got the job on the spot. :-) Damn, I'm good. :-)) ha ha yeah, right.

ZigBee can run for years on inexpensive batteries. ZigBee allows a variety of low-power devices to communicate wirelessly. ZigBee makes it possible to talk to your devices over a single network. ZigBee is cheap.

Are you not excited yet? I am. Welcome to the future. Actually, not so distant future, as the major companies are already investing in ZigBee. You should see ZigBee devices this year. Sweet. :)

How could you use it? Well, one good usage would be security. You would attach a ZigBee device to your doors. Then, if they're opened when you're not at home, you could set it up so you get an alert (email, SMS, etc), or even notify the police. Basically, you will be able to control devices using your computer network.

How did I hear about it? There was an article about it in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.

Keep an eye on it.

How many times have you removed startup entries using the msconfig tool? If you're like me, the answer is way too many times. Some programs, like RealPlayer and QuickTime just love to come back and eat up your resources when your computer starts up. WinPatrol to the rescue. Scotty (the dog's name sitting on your taskbar), please patrol my computer. :-) I've installed WinPatrol on my computer several weeks ago and since then, Scotty alerted me numerous times. I just say no. I say no to programs that try to sneak in without my permisson. That's not nice. :-(

Keep your computer running smoothly: install WinPatrol and control your startup entries. Scotty does a good job. Plus, this program is very easy to use.

I am tired of pre-approved credit card offers. I have several credit cards and I don't want any more. I want to opt out from the list where these credit agencies get my name from. OK, Stas, go to this website and opt out: OptOutPreScreen.com. That's what I did yesterday. We'll see what happens. :-)

I am also tired of unwanted letters in the mail. I only want to open letters that are of interest to me. I have to say that after signing up for this service, Mail Preference Service (MPS), I receive a lot less junk (just like you get less calls after signing up for do-not-call list). I'm seeing that my wife is getting a lot more junk mail now -- I signed her up last week. :-) You have to mail a letter to them.

So that's how I keep myself from opening unwanted letters.

Are you looking for coffee shops in the area where you live? No? Are you looking for barber shops in your area? No? Are you looking for anything in your area and want an easier way of finding it? Sure you do. Google Local to the rescue! It let's you search in your area. Plus, it shows you the location in the presented, zoomable map. Wow! It's amazing what Google is doing. (Maybe their stock price is where it should be? :))

Google Local: check it out for yourself!

I remember a professor in my freshman year in college talking about this. He said, that in the future you'll be able to search locally. That's exactly what this is. I believed in what he said, as it made sense. It was just dificult to do. And now, localized searches are almost a reality (almost, because I don't know if this is 100% effective). This will be big!

This entry is only applicable if you use MovableType. :-(

Are you getting spam comments in you MovableType blog? I see this as a growing problem among many bloggers. A lot of the bloggers are so fed up that they stop comments altogether. I think that's too extreme. I'll give you a Anti-spam solution for MovableType that I put in in place (it was suggested to me by a friend :-)) for my MT blog and that has been working 100%.

What's the trick? Adding a new, custom, hidden field on the comments form and checking for it when the comment is submitted.

Why does it work? It works because spammers don't go to your site to post the comment. They use a crawler to do that. And using a crawler, they have to have to same script work for all MovableType, and possible others, blogs. Like I said, it has worked 100% for me -- not a single spam comment passed through. How can I tell? That's the fun out of the solution. I log each request by a spammer in the activity log. The solution presented here does that.

The solution requires some tweaking with couple of MT files. But if you can change couple lines in a file manually, you can do it. It's a two step process. Very simple.

Step 1: Add a new hidden parameter to your Comment Listing Template

You can find it under TEMPLATES in MT.

Locate the following in that file:

<form method="post" action="/mt/mt-comments.cgi" 

Add a new hidden field inside the form. I named the field "saynotospam" but you can name it anything you want. You should, actually, so spammers don't write the script for it. After you're done, it will look something like this (you only need to add the bolded code):

<form method="post" action="/mt/mt-comments.cgi" name="comments" 
onsubmit="this.saynotospam.value='donny';
if (this.bakecookie[0].checked) rememberMe(this)">

<input type="hidden" name="saynotospam" />

If you allow to Preview comments, you have to add the field there as well (same code). Plus, if you have the comment enabled/embedded somewhere else, you have to do the same (I had to add it to my Individual Entry Archive).

Step 2: Verify that the parameter exists when MT posts it.

When the MT posts the comment and the field does not exist, you stop it, not letting the comment be added.

Open mt/lib/MT/App/Comments.pm

and add the following in the "post" method (search for it):

sub post {
    my $app = shift;
    my $q = $app->{query};
 
   # 7/13/2004 sk
   if (!$q->param('saynotospam')) {
   		$app->log("spammer ignored");
       	return $app->error("get lost");
    }
...
}

That's it. Watch the spam comments in the Activity Log of MT. I had done the above and I have not received a single spam comment. I used to receive couple per week before. Thanks Rob.

As you know, broadband is good: there is no coming back to dial-up. But broader band is even better. The broadest broadband is optical fiber, capable of moving data at multigigabit-per-second speeds. The only way we get hundreds of television channels, movies on demand, teleconferencing, etc. is through fiber. I see a bright future in fiber.

And now, we're beginning to see some action. That is, from companies that will deliver the fiber -- Verizon, SBC and BellSouth -- that are putting a big pile of money into fiber (Verizon alone reportedly has plans to spend $20-40 billion over next 10- to 15-years). What's cool, though, is that they agreed on a standard, which will lower costs. The main reason for the action, though, is that DSL cannot compete with cable speed-wise and they don't know any other way around.

But the point I'm trying to make: Until we get fiber to our home, we'll not be able to experience movies on demand, watching shows live on the internet, listening to music and radio on the internet, etc. -- all of the really cool stuff that requires a super-fast connection. And once the price is going to be right, fiber will experience tremendous growth -- because of the potential. Stay tuned.

I've been watching Mozilla struggle for years now. With each release, I was saying to myself, these guys are never going to get it. I've been seeing some good things from them, but never as good as Internet Explorer.

Things have changed, however. With the upcoming release of Firefox 1.0, I think Firefox is better than Internet Explorer. I've made it my default browser.

There are a couple of reasons why I like it more than IE. First, it is a whole lot more customizable. With the developer support that Mozilla is getting, you can get a good number of extensions. There is one that I have and that I really love. It's called Adblock, and it's a top-rated extension. With Adblock, I can remove ads from the sites that I visit on a regular basis. How? Adblock is smart enough to recognize it (with couple of clicks, of course). See the list of extensions here.

Second, Firefox has more features built in. If you ever experience tabbed browsing, you will never want to go back. For real. Built-in shortcuts in favorites is another really cool feature. Let's say you want to lookup a word in Dictionary.com. You would do first go to Dictionary.com, search for the word, and copy the resulting URL. You paste that URL into the dialog box from New bookmark, add "d" as your Keyword, and replace the word you searched for with "%s." That's it. (The process is very simple so I might be complicating it.) After that, anytime you type "d" followed by anything you want to search for, it will go there directly. I defined several Keywords for myself: for Google searching, for stock-chart lookup, and for a dictionary. It's simple and great.

Third, Firefox is fast. Maybe not as fast as IE, but fast enough. And a lot faster than previous versions of Mozilla/Firefox. I'm saying that because a lot of people say Mozilla is slow, etc. It's fast, very fast.

Fourth, Firefox is more secure. There is no question about it. If only for the single reason that its market share is small. People don't bother as much in attacking it.

I like Firefox very much. I'm excited! :-) I like it also because it has a chance to bring competition back to the browser market. I love competition, and anytime you only have one player, it's called monopoly. That's not a good situation.

Get Firefox here and try it for yourself.
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

I'm sure that almost everybody experienced their computer running slower and slower as more programs are added. Or simply just by using the computer. So how do you keep your computer running at maximum speeds? I'm going to give you my top reasons that should keep you computer running, well, let's just say, up to its potential. (And, yeah, I wrote this little guide myself.)

1) Add RAM (Random Access Memory): if you don't have at least 512MB, add more! This is the single, most important thing that will improve your computer speed. Believe me, you'll see the difference!

This is the reason: as your computer is running and you are using programs, such as memory eater Office, each program is stored in RAM. As you open new programs, more RAM is needed. If you run short of it, your computer needs to use Virtual Memory (a combination of RAM and your hard disk). So, for instance, when a program requests more RAM and does not find it, your PC will have to swap some older programs to your hard disk (slow operation) to free the RAM. That process will take away valuable PC resources and will make your computer seem slow. A simple solution for that: when your PC asks for it, give it to it, by having spare RAM.

2) De-fragment Your Disk: it should be done probably at least once a month. What happens is that when you move/remove your files the disk, space is getting fragmented (your files are stored in several, different places on hard disk). So. when you're saving a larger file, it will take a while for your PC to find (or compose) the location (or space) for it -- from several chunks, making it a slow operation. If your Hard Disk is not fragmented, it will put it in one, continues place; your PC does not need to search for empty fragments since it will get in on first request.

3) Minimize the number of programs loading on startup. I only have my Firewall and Anti-Virus start each time my computer starts. Every program that loads at startup eats valuable RAM, plus it takes time to load it, making it seem like your computer is slow.

How can you see and remove programs that load on startup? The first place to look on your Windows machine is Start/Programs/Startup. Remove all but the mentioned above from there -- most likely, you do not need any other ones.

The second place, harder to find, is msconfig -- Start/Run and type msconfig. On the Startup tab you will see all of the programs that load initially (yeah, the list might seem very long -- they all start, slowing down your computer!) So which ones do you remove? (You should do this often, as new programs like to get there manually.) On my XP machine I only have a Firewall (Zone Alarm -- free), and a Norton Anti-Virus (vptray) checked-off, and yeah, the list is also long on my machine (all, but the 2, unchecked). One little thing, each time you make a change, when you restart, it will give you a warning: Just check of "Don't show this warning anymore" check-box and you should be fine.

4) Remove Spyware from your computer. What is Spyware? Let me just tell you that you acquire Spyware just by browsing the Internet and installing different programs. (It seems that Spyware is everywhere now, just like SPAM.) They are basically programs/tracking cookies/etc (not necessary stuff) sitting on your computer, taking valuable resources and spying on you! On a recent system scan, my anti-spyware program discovered 69 different objects identified as Spyware. And I haven't really installed anything and haven't visited all those sites that you might suspect to have it.

What can you do about? First, get an anti-spam program. There are two good ones that do the job and are FREE: Ad-aware and Spybot - Search And Destroy. I've used both, but I like Ad-aware much better. It is simple to use and works great. (The only bad -- cumbersome -- thing about it, is that you have to individually select all of those objects that you want removed.) I had had some problems with Spybot, but it still does the job, I think.

Second, run the program every couple of weeks, at least. Before you run it, though, make sure you update the definitions (just as in an anti-virus program). It takes around 2 minutes to scan your computer. However, you'll be amazed how much stuff you'll find. And removing those intrusions is fun. Plus, most of all, it speeds up your computer.

5) Format the hard disk. If you feel that the above items do not work, the best alternative -- having the most visible results, although very radical move -- is to format your hard disk. If you have the time, you should do it every year or so -- your computer will be running at top speeds (if you also follow the four methods mentioned above).

So, I ask you: Have you seen a difference? I know my computer is running nicely. Some might say, get Linux, I'd say yeah, it might be a solution, but I'm still waiting for more adaptation and ease of use.

Audible.com is a fairly cool service where you download audio books. You can then put those books on a CD or on your compatible MP3 player. It seems like they have a big selection of books. They also have a subscription service.

They have two types of subscriptions. One, for $19.95 per month, where you get any two books in that month. And second, where for $15 you get a book and a periodical (daily, weekly or monthly magazine).

I consider this a pretty good service for somebody like me, who commutes for more than 1/2 hour to work. (It takes me close to an hour each way. :-( ). That's why I signed up for the first option, where I get two books per month, plus, along with that I get a pretty cool MP3 player. It's a basic player, but it beats burning each book on a CD: the transfer is quick. One cool thing about it, though, is that whenever I stop it, it remembers the last position I was at (for each book). That's very helpful.

Overall, I think Audible gives you a pretty good deal. Most of these books are priced more than $20, so it's like getting one for free each month. Plus, I can finally put my driving time to better use. Uhm... maybe driving will not be that bad after all... See for yourself.

If you don't have an anti-virus installed on your computer, and don't want to pay for one, you might want to try one of these, free ones.

Alwil Avast 4 Home Edition: VB100 and ICSA certified, on-access and on-demand scanning, e-mail scanning for Outlook and POP3/SMTP, automatic updates, e-mail technical support, 7.1MB.

Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus System: VB100 and ICSA certified, on-access and on-demand scanning, e-mail scanning for Outlook and Outlook Express, automatic updates, 5.7MB.

H+BEDV Datentechnik AntiVir Personal Edition: ICSA certified, on-access and on-demand scanning but no e-mail scanning, automatic updates (after fairly significant configuration effort), 3.8MB.

Softwin BitDefender Free Edition Version 7: Uses same scanning engine as the VB100- and ICSA-certified Standard Edition, on-access and on-demand scanning but no e-mail scanning, automatic updates, 8.8MB.

See an article at PC World.com here.

I've recently come across two very cool RSS readers: Pluck and Bloglines.com. Both are free, by the way. :-) I"ll explain how I use them and which one I like better.

What is an RSS reader? RSS is the new, cool way to distribute your blog, or your website content, i.e., news. I have several news sites that I read and several blogs, so, using an RSS reader I can do it in one place, without going through different sites. It almost feels like reading email: all of the posts that you read are marked accordingly, so you don't have to look at it again. Plus, an RSS reader can notify you when there is a new entry in any of your subscriptions. It is a very cool technology. If you haven't tried it, you should. It basically changed (or changes) the way I read/access news and blogs. I'll tell you about the 2 different readers that I discovered.

Pluck This is my favorite RSS reader. It is a plug-in for IE and uses IE to render pages. That's very cool, since you can see the actual post right inside it. It is fast, too. When you install Pluck (very easy and fast), it comes pre-installed with several categories (sports, news, business, and more) so even if you don't have any sites (read below, though :-)) you can still see how the technology works.

Bloglines.com I like this one as well -- I actually use both. :-) It is very easy to use. The advantage of this one is that it sits in one central location, on their server, and you can access it from any computer. That's a big advantage, I think, because you don't have to install it on every computer -- you can access it at work without installing anything. Bloglines has a count of users that are subscribed to the blog/site that you are retrieving info from -- but I think that the count is based on the users from Bloglines.com :-(((

How do you get new RSS subscriptions? As more and more sites create RSS feeds, you will see a simple XML logo, RSS logo, or other on their sites. Clicking on it, copying the address, and entering that address into the reader does the job. Simple.

To get a feed from this site (yeah, from this site), click on the XML icon in the bottom left corner (last icon) and add the address to the reader. Enjoy. :-)

I love books and I buy a lot of them. (I would say I'm buying a book per month.) Do I spend a lot of money on them? I guess I do, but before I buy any book I do the following to make sure that the book I'm buying is a good one and that I'm getting it at a good price:

1) Read the reviews
2) Find the best price available

1: Read the reviews

I use Amazon.com to find out what other readers think about the book. If the book does not have at least 4 stars, I usually don't buy it. (Unless it was recommended by somebody that I know.) I don't want to read books that I'm not going to like. I want to read the best books, so that's why I buy the highest rated books and books recommended by somebody.

On Amazon.com, I also like the lists (recommendations) from other Amazon.com users. A good list tells me which books I might need on any subjects and the reasons why that user thinks so. If I find somebody with a good list, I add him/her to my Favorite People or to my Friends' List at Amazon.com. Once I know what book I'm going to buy, I find the best price.

2: Find the best price available

I use a book search engine to find a best book deal. I have two websites that do the job for me: FetchBook.info and BookArea.com. Each of these sites looks in around 40 on-line bookstores and gives me a list, sorted by the best book price. I buy based on this list. A lot of times, used books on Amazon.com and Half.com come on top of those lists, so, if I don't want to search, I buy a used book from those sources.

So there you go. That's how I buy my books. Hopefully, you can save a buck or two doing it this way. I know I do. :-) Do you have a different, better way? Let us know.

This seems pretty cool: For $10/month get news, movies, and other videos delivered to a box by broadband, thus avoiding the need for cable or satellite. OK, I got carried away a little bit, but that might just come in the future -- that's what I'm waiting for.

Anyway, coming this spring, for $10 a month, Akimbo will deliver programs ranging from independent films to foreign-language news to rock-climbing videos. Akimbo sends the video feed over a broadband Internet connection to your Akimbo player ($199). You can choose from 10,000 hours of programming and store up to 200 hours on your player at a time.

So, although not a break-through, it seems like a step closer to getting your sports/news/movies over the Internet and not requiring cable/satellite.