Linked by David Adams on Mon 27th Oct 2008 23:11 UTC
OSNews, Generic OSes As part of our ongoing series, "Building the Wired Home," we've been experimenting with what could be a sea-change in the whole concept of a home computer. Home computers, of course, have long ago become commonplace, and computers have even taken on some roles that used to be delegated to standalone consumer electronics, such as audio and video storage and playback. They've gone from being exotic oddities to ever-more-useful home appliances. Interestingly, though, as our home computers have become more powerful, sophisticated, and useful, they have also become decentralized and have, in most inefficient fashion, been chopped up and redistributed around the house. "Read more" to learn how our experiment worked out.
Thread beginning with comment 335175
To read all comments associated with this story, please click here.
Amen!
by RandomGuy on Tue 28th Oct 2008 00:12 UTC
RandomGuy
Member since:
2006-07-30

But, excuse my French, but that's bullshit. It is not immoral to media-shift or format-shift content that you have fairly purchased. Do you know what is immoral? Expecting people to pay a second time for a movie or song, just because you want to watch or listen to it on another device, or store it in a more convenient manner. And that includes ringtones made from songs you own.


I couldn't have said it better myself. However, since you can't fine every second citizen a bazillion dollars for each ripped file or throw him in jail, I still hope that the law will finally adapt to reality.

Regarding the home automation, surveillance, and entertainment stuff - I think it's really cool. Mostly pointless but awesome nevertheless.
Seeing the small price and relatively low power consumption of netbooks I see no reason why there shouldn't be a real PC integrated into every TV, game console, etc. in the near future. These devices could all work independently until they need additional storage and or processing power and then request some from the server in the the basement.