Joel Johnson at CES 2005:

I didn't quite know what to think of it, but I wasn't going to turn it down. I would ask the hard questions: Does Ballmer really eat children? Can I swim in your Money Bin? I didn't quite muster the balls to ask those, though, and instead acted like I had real questions or something.

[CES 2005]

Blam at CES 2007:

I'd asked him about the mug shot [from his Albuquerque arrest] and at first he looked a bit apprehensive, but answered. Apparently, Bill loves fast cars. In 1978, he told us, he'd gotten 3 speeding tickets on his drive to move up to Seattle. Two from the same cop. It was a Porsche 911 from that era.

[CES 2007]

Wilson at CES 2008:

When it came to be my turn, I had the warnings and admonitions of Blam to guide me. And sure enough, he didn't look me in the eye at first, and though he was accommodating with my nervous stuttering, I could tell he was judging the substance of my questions. Mercifully, he little by little began looking more directly at me, and he lit up with answers, even letting his guard down enough to comment frankly about Windows, and the difference between Apple and Microsoft.

Here's the vid itself, plus various excerpts, shot and digitally mastered by our own Chris Mascari:

Excerpts:

Part 1 - On the difference between Microsoft and Apple



Part 2 - On his changing public image



Part 3 - What he worries about most



Part 4 - On Windows Vista maybe, just maybe, sucking

Anyone who's ever tried to "install" a 50 inch plasma or LCD all by themselves (GUILTY!!) knows that this here is wonderful news, and not too far off. Many of these TVs will be shipping in 2008 and some in 2009. By and large, the buzz is that, before we get to the next wave of TV technology, there will be some nice improvements in the current stuff. TV manufacturers, my back and my little pinky finger thank you!

Biggest TV:
Panasonic's 150-inch TV
We love it because: It makes us feel small.
Trouble is: You have to build your house around this TV.

Almost Big Enough:
31-inch OLED
We Love it because: OLED is the future, it's thinner, faster, deeper.
Trouble is: These prototypes are years away from being affordable.

Best Media Player:
iRiver Media Players
We Love it because: We thought they were all concepts, but they're
not. They're just incredible.

Best TV Tech:
Tie: 9mm Plasma the Blackest and Mitsubishi's Laser TV because it uses
lasers.
We love it because: Pioneer's plasmas literally eat light. Lasers, cool.
Trouble is: Are we going to have to replace our plasma every year?

Coolest Geek:
Bill Gates Playing With Dolls Like in Spaceballs and on Windows Sucking
We love him because: Without him we wouldn't be here.
Trouble is: He's retiring! And when we asked him to play racquetball, Gates said he'd be washing his hair...for the next 30 years.

Making the Format War Irrelevant:
Samsung BP-U5500
We love it because: It makes the format war go away.
Trouble is: The format war may already be irrelevant. Best for those already entrenched in HD DVD

Best Ambush:
Blu-ray Winning the War by getting Warner to announce a change to Blu Jan 4th.
We love it because: Sony plays a good game of chess.
Trouble is: We prefer HD-DVD!

Nameless Women We Love:
Non-Booth Babe Babes
We love them because: Women should not be on display like TVs at this
show.
Trouble is: We can't stare at them without feeling a little guilty.

Most Deceptively Dangerous Gadget:
Leopard Skin Taser with built in MP3 player
We love it because: It's the Frankenstein of gadgets.
Trouble is: We want to run it out of town with pitchforks and torches.

Best Ghetto Fabulous TV:
Vizio HDTV with Silicon Optix Reon inside
We love it because: A budget company went for some high end video scaling gear.
Trouble is: Can the rest of the set keep up with the Silicon Optix?
Reon chip?

Best Follow Up to Steve Jobs' Favorite Cameras:
Camcorders Panasonic HDC-SD9
We love it because: Tiny, 1080p, under $1000.
Trouble is: Sony+Canon=competition.

Best Propaganda:
Microsoft-at-Home Server Book
Low blow, Microsoft (which means it was perfect).

Sweetest Laptop
Asus Eee PC, 8.9-inch
We love it because: The only thing wrong with our Eee is the screen size.
Trouble is: Like Viagra bottles tell us, erections lasting over 8 hours require doctor consultations.

Best Insulting Robot
This Guy
War with robots? It's freakin' on! You'd better grow some lasers fast before we kick your...

Best UMPC
Aigo Silverthorne-based system
We love it because: Intel Silverthorne chipset makes it tiny.
Trouble is: The early version we saw needs some polish.

Hottest Peripheral
Lasonic iPod Boombox
We love it because: Minimalist design is played out.
Trouble is: Boomboxes are too big for today's weak geeks to tote anywhere.

Most Pants-Worthy Phone
Sony Ericsson W350
We love it because: It has a sexy, thin design that takes a chance.
Trouble is: CES was absolute crap for phones.

Best Couch Masturbation Enabler:
FyreTV
We love it because: "Quick draws" are rewarded with cheap viewing.
Trouble is: It's not disguised as a PS3 or something else that our kids/wives will never touch.

Biggest Surprise:
Optimus Maximus Keyboard
We loved it because: We considered the hype met. OLED keys make our geek hearts palpitate.
Trouble is: People whining about the price—like a Ferrari, just because we can't afford it doesn't mean we don't want one.

And that's CES my friends!

Writing by Brian Lam and Mark Wilson.

Consumer electronics tech journalism is very tricky. Those who strictly cover commercial CE depend on a powerful handful of companies for the very lifeblood of their content. That's a dangerous position. A "favor" by a company can turn into the laziest kind of "scoop" imaginable, a scrap from the dinner table for the dogs of journalism. And every gadget journalist has wrestled with his conscience as he gains more access and becomes inseparable from the industry and depends on more and more of these scoops.

But bloggers and trade journalists, so desperate for a seat at the table with big mainstream publications have it completely backwards: You don't get more access by selling out for press credentials first chance you get, kowtowing to corporations and tradeshows and playing nice; you earn your respect by fact finding, reporting, having untouchable integrity, provocative coverage and gaining readers through your reputation for those things. Our prank pays homage to the notion of independence and independent reporting. And no matter how much access the companies give us, we won't ever stop being irreverent. That's what this prank was about and what the press should understand.

Critics talk about the prank costing dollars and jobs. Motorola said "no harm, no foul" and enjoyed the joke. (Although they will be checking every body cavity I have for IR blasters next press conference.) Were there AV techs who got in trouble? They need only show their bosses the video to be blame-free.

Many of our harshest critics have done far worse than clicking off a few TVs. I'm talking about ethical lapses such as accepting paid junkets to Japan by Nikon, or free trips to Korea by Samsung. Turning a blind eye to Apple's mistakes when they didn't make an iPhone SDK and sought to lock down the handset. Stock prices torn downward by publishing incorrect leaked info. Writing about companies that also pay you for advertorial podcast work. All of these examples are offenses from the last year. And I consider those offenses far worse than our prank, because it ultimately it puts the perpetrators on the wrong team. As one reporter put it while chiding me, "Journalists are guests in the houses of these companies." Not first and foremost! We are the auditors of companies and their gadgets on behalf of the readers. In this job, integrity and independence is far more important than civil or corporate obedience. Every tech journalist has to decide whether or not he's writing for companies or for readers. When they start writing for the companies, covering all their press releases and regurgitating marketing jargon, you do no one any favors (not even the companies, which already hire press release machines).

Gizmodo was given access to film and interview Bill Gates again this year. Some pubs might have softened up on questioning him, but we didn't: We got the guy to open up and talk about Windows and its shortcomings like he never has before, not even on 60 minutes. If that's not journalism, I don't know what is. If we had been in the pocket of this industry, we never would have asked such a risky question—and probably wouldn't have been granted the interview to begin with.

In closing, I will fill you in on our little secret: TVs turn back on when you press the power button a second time. So, I can assure you, everything is going to be OK once the companies find their clickers between the couch cushions of our prank and your obedience. Will our critics find it as easy to turn their integrity back on? I doubt it.

Gizmodo's Bill Gates CES 2008 Interview:
Part 1 - On the difference between Microsoft and Apple
Part 2 - On his changing public image
Part 3 - What he worries about most
Part 4 - Holy Crap: Did Bill Gates Just Say Windows Sucks?

Some of these systems are shipping soon, while others are only in the experimental stage. The remarkable thing is, all except one of the transmit/receive concepts we saw looked indistinguishable from wired HDMI video to the eyes of a normal person:

LG will offer wireless 1080p as an option on its 50-inch and 60-inch PG70 plasma screens, and it'll be standard on the LG71 LCD panel. Using the 802.11n protocol, the video is compressed with JPEG 2000, and looked nearly perfect with few visible artifacts. All these models will ship in August.

Westinghouse Digital's wireless 1080p system uses UWB (ultra wideband) components from Pulse-LINK, building the receiver into its TVs and using (nearly) visually lossless JPEG 2000 compression to make it all possible. Available in Q4, the company says it'll add $200 to the price of a 1080p LCD TV.

Gefen's UWB-based wireless HD system was the closest to a shipping product we saw, albeit capable of only 1080i/720p transmission. The $700 system is in the final stages of approval and the company says it will ship "in a couple of weeks."

Belkin's wireless 1080p product uses 5.8GHz RF (radio frequency) tech by Amimon that we saw demonstrated at last year's CES, transmitted by this cool-looking box to a receiver mounted on the back of the TV that can be between 50 and 100 feet away. It'll be available in September for around $600.

Panasonic's Viera Link Wireless HD sends a beam from transmitter to receiver using 60GHz RF. If someone gets in the way of that signal, its "beam steering technology" bounces the beam around to get it there anyway. Seems to act like infrared, although they told us it's radio frequency. Looks great, but they had the works hidden in a big, clunky cabinet. Seems pretty far from commercial rollout.

Sony's wireless in-room HD also used Amimon technology for its demo, where booth reps were careful to call it a conceptual idea. While Sony had a snazzy-looking transmitter box (seen at the bottom of the pic above) in view, the guy admitted that the real workings were concealed in the cabinet below. The video quality of the 1080p was nearly perfect, with almost no latency, a hallmark of the Amimon system that's been working well since a year ago. Sony wouldn't say when or if the tech would be brought to market.

In another demo around the corner, Sony showed us its 720p/1080i wireless HD system (transmitter picture in inset above), compressing the video with a few artifacts and a three-second latency, but able to transmit the signal 100-300 feet. This version also had a backchannel for remote commands to be sent back to the transmitter.

Summing up, hold off with that sledgehammer you're about to use to smash the drywall to install HDMI cable for your home theater projector. It looks like practical and affordable wireless 1080p will be the Next Big Thing, and we expect it to be shipping from numerous manufacturers using a variety of tech by next year's CES. Before long, according to tech driver Amimon, economies of scale will allow the technology to be built into components at little extra cost.

1. Intel's booth (pictured above), our favorite, spins lappies into a humongous and hellacious helix that kicked our asses all the way into the middle of next week.

2. A Disney pirate ship, sitting there on top of the Blu-ray booth? Yep, it was built to promote the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and we even snuck into its insides, which were being used as a break room for bored booth babes. Its realism, created by the same artisans, set designers and carpenters who make Disney World so appealing, was accurate right down to the seagull guano.

3. LG stacks TVs a mile high, and this time, in a way that was even more effective than last year, the Lucky Goldstar gang showed us that Life is indeed Good.

4. Belkin's booth looked like it came straight out of Dwell magazine. A booth? No, this swank little townhouse on the CES show floor was a place in which we would have liked to have slept—it would have been a whole better than our shitty hotel rooms.

5. The Nordic cool of the Philips booth appealed to our aesthetic sensibility, and its thick cushy carpet made sense. Its booth and the occupants therein were all easy on the eyes.

6. These oversized Eneloop batteries, jutting out of the show floor like so many electric phalluses, made us laugh while making us dig the product even more.

7. The giant Samsung booth dominated the show floor, roadblocking the area and offering no exit from its back side. That sucked, but we still liked the power of the thing, but we're biased because the front showed off our fave screen of the entire show, the 82-inch ultra high definition TV, a 3840x2160 masterpiece that's the world's largest of its type.

8. As far as waterfalls of TVs go, Sharp does 'em best, filling the air with its beauteous Aquos displays. Pretty.

9. Sony's booth felt inviting and relaxing, and there was a separate area for the Sony Pictures division where you could just kick back and watch some TV for a while. Naw, we didn't hang out there much, but we always knew it was there.

10. Gibson had a huge party tent set up in the parking lot, touting its fab new robotic guitars and such. But the kicker was the big-name bands and gigsters they had playing every night. For example, here's Peter Frampton. There were also beaucoups other celebs hanging around, too. Overall, it was a no-bullshit approach that was much appreciated.

Photography by Curtis Walker, Peter Frampton photo by Sandy Campbell

You've already seen the details. The FyreTV streams you DVD-quality adult IPTV from major studios, letting you enjoy content without having to store it locally. You've got three packages to subscribe with beyond the mandatory $9.99 monthly fee that gives you a certain bucket of minutes.

• Buying more on-demand minutes to use as you watch, which will be somewhere between $0.17 to $0.24 a minute.
• Buying a specific movie to get unlimited viewing.
• Buying a monthly pass to get unlimited access (for that month) to a specific studio's content, which gives you all the movies in their catalog. This will be somewhere around $24ish, depending on the studio.

The box performance was great. DVD quality video was good on the cheap Vizio set they were demoing it on. The remote control was super responsive, and when you queue up a video it streams incredibly fast (probably because of their setup on the floor, so we'll have to see how it performs in the real world when we do a hands-on at home).

Other great functionality include bookmarking, favorites, playback history, playlists, scene ranking (1 to 5 stars), combination tag searches (Blondes, Boobs, Blondes + Big Boobs were the ones we used) and easy fast forward/rewinding through scenes.

FyreTV's best news is that their box will have no stickers (as shown in the pictures) or markings on it, so you can hide it in plain sight next to your DVR and have your in-laws be none the wiser. Why watch porn on your little computer monitor when you can watch it on a 150-inch HDTV in your living room? Oh and if you've read this far, it means you're definitely interested in this thing. We're going to have a special code soon for Gizmodo readers that will get you into the expanded beta (they went from 5,000 to 10,000 beta units) ahead of everyone else. [FyreTV]

Photo credit: FyreTV

Gizmodo's Bill Gates CES 2008 Interview:
Part 1 - On the difference between Microsoft and Apple
Part 2 - On his changing public image
Part 3 - What he worries about most

The deets: The movies are around 1GB (standard def and PSP-optimized) and take about 3-5 minutes to download via USB to the Memory Stick Duo in your PSP. Currently, the idea is that they aren't stored locally on your PS3. Sony expects it to be available sometime this year—nothing more fine-grained than that timewise, unfortunately

The sweet news: For now, the plan is that the service will be free and it "can be used potentially on any Blu-ray movie title." Hopefully that means it'll be available for every Blu-ray title.

The potentially bleh news: Sony is still in the processing of reviewing how the DRM is going to work, and how portable the copies are going to be (important, since they're stored on Mem. Stick Duos, which are pretty pocketable.) In particular, the number of copies you can make from each disc is still up in the air—so it looks like how many friends you can share with is definitely going to be limited.

DRM-wise it's nothing unexpected—given Blu-ray's emphasis on strong copy protection, Sony's obviously not going to give free reign with the PSP copies. But even with some limits placed on the service, it stands to be one of the best PS3-PSP connections yet. [Sony]

So just when is HD DVD dead in Microsoft's eyes? It's "over when Toshiba says they're not doing HD DVD anymore." And despite the typhoon slamming their sails this week, we're pretty certain Toshiba is staying on on the boat until it hits the sea floor. [Giz's HD DVD Coverage]

1. Booth Babes
Are we such simple people? Are we so easy to manipulate that all it takes for us to decide that a product is worth writing about or purchasing are some out-of-work strippers in skimpy outfits handing out 64MB thumb drives? Yes! It seems to work. D-Link, a boring company, consistently had loads of pasty, sweaty show goers swarming around its booth, ogling their whorishly dressed booth attendants and grabbing at free handouts that aren't worth the jostling it takes to get them.

2. Gimmicky Booths
If a company is too classy to put half-naked women with no dignity in front of their booths to draw in foot traffic, it's pretty likely that they have some less offensive gimmicky crap in their booth. Cheesy fake game shows? Yes, that'll make me take your company seriously. Magicians? Wow, I am optimistic about your company's potential in the CE marketplace. I am interested in sharing this with our readers, as it seems like something that they should take seriously. Oh, wait, no it doesn't! You seem to have fooled me with your magic! Luckily, I have the sense of mind to ignore you and try to move past without being sucked into your tractor beam of the lowest common denominator.

3. Digital Picture Frames
Variations of these things are shown by the most companies at the most booths. Why? Digital picture frames are the worst gadget out there, tacky garbage that I can't imagine anyone would ever buy. But they do! These companies are all putting them out because you people are buying them by the truckload! They're essentially little flat-panel TVs with no tuners and a crappy frame wrapped around them. They then sit there, sucking up energy 24 hours a day, ruining our environment and making your living room look like the Fox News studio on the slowest news day in history.

4. Press Manipulation and Blog Wars
We get suckered in to covering CES like it's the second coming every year; we brought something like 14 people this time around. For what? So we can cover stuff we normally would pass on in hopes that we can get it up three minutes before Engadget. Companies cocktease us and make us go and do pointless liveblogs of their boring press conferences only to announce minor upgrades of the same garbage they released last year. This is worth 14 round-trip airline tickets and a dozen hotel rooms for a week?

5. Panasonic's 150-inch TV
This is probably the "biggest" announcement of CES, and it's a product that .000001% of the population will be able to afford if and when it's released five years from now. If that isn't a damning enough summation of why CES is irrelevant, I don't know what is. Isn't this show supposed to be about consumer electronics that will be released this year? This thing is neither, it's basically a big billboard from Panasonic saying "Our Dick is Bigger Than Sharp's Dick," and because we on the internet love pictures of over-the-top things, we shoot our loads all over it. Fuck the 150-inch TV.

6. Marketing Speak
The way people talk here is like 1984 if Big Brother was more interested in LCD TVs than suppressing the people. Is the Jook wireless streaming dongle really "revolutionary?" No, not even a little. Is it true that "There's a fine line between art and technology [and] it's called Opus, from LG"? No. That doesn't even make sense, and it offends me that you think I'd take such an idiotic statement seriously. You can't walk five feet on the show floor without hearing some horrible line of moronic marketing speak come out of the mouth of an overly perky 5-foot-tall PR girl in a pantsuit, and it makes me want to stab myself in the ears.

7. Designer Tasers
How are violent weapons with a sassy case one of the most buzzed about gadgets here? How are Tasers even considered gadgets? These things have clearly been erroneously put in the hands of cops and security guards everywhere who see them as a great alternative to handling situations verbally, and now we're supposed to give them to people who see leopard print as a pretty hip fashion choice? Commodifying serious violence isn't funny or cute, and just because you slap the shittiest MP3 player ever in a hip holster for a pink Taser doesn't make it a gadget I'd want to see people carrying around.

8. Knockoffs, Accessories and Other Cheap Crap
Half the stuff at this show is utter junk, created by money-obsessed vultures who would kick their own mothers in the teeth to figure out a way to trick consumers into paying a 5000% markup on something that nobody wants. It's booth after depressing booth of Wii weapons, nano knockoffs, iPod accessories and any number of other things that are pumped out at alarming rates with no thought being put into innovation or usefulness. When you disregard the top, most visible 1%, pretty much every consumer electronics company eschews good engineering, good design and imagination for getting derivative garbage out to market as fast as possible. It's a marketplace overflowing with lazy ripoff artists, greasy-haired shysters just looking to make a quick buck with the least amount of effort possible. And that's not even mentioning the environmental impact of manufacturing thousands upon thousands of tons of plastic crap every year, a good chunk of which ends up in landfills.

9. MyVu Video Glasses
While marketing weasels love to talk about bringing people together with technology, a lot of the crap shown here at CES encourages just the opposite. Take the MyVu video glasses, for example. If the folks behind this stupid device had their way, we'd all be in our own little worlds all the time, unable to see anything but the video we're watching. Hell, all sorts of "innovations" promote the same thing: don't talk, text message. Don't hang out in real life, hang out in Second Life. Don't travel to the Grand Canyon with your family, check it out on the Travel Channel in HD. The way these things are headed, we'll all be plugged into our own private media centers all the time, with our only human interaction happening when we need to update our credit card info with the home office.

10. CES is Leaving Las Vegas
Apparently, CES might be leaving Las Vegas for greener pastures in the future. This makes me sad. Let me tell you my favorite part of Vegas. In our hotel, the Imperial Palace (the crown jewel of the strip), they have a Dealertainers Pit in its casino. The Dealertainers are celebrity impersonators that deal blackjack. They aren't the best or most accurate impersonators in the world (the J. Lo impersonator is Asian, for example), but they have heart. We befriended the Bette Midler Dealertainer last year, falling in love with her off-color jokes and sassy demeanor. One of the first things I saw when checking in at the hotel this year? Ol' Bette, looking a whole lot older and a little bit less sassy. But she was here. And if I can't depend on seeing Bette, then what's the point of coming to CES in the first place?

[Photos 1, 2, 3 and 6 by Curtis Walker]

Chandler Blinkers III, who died aged 89, enrolled the Royal Navy in 1940, a definitive moment in his life since he left his home coral at the Ansagna Reef in the Maldives, aged 16. Son of Sir Chandler Blinkers II, a herring from Bristol, and Lady Alfonsina Maddy, a former burlesque actress from Buenos Aires, the fish affectionally called Pit fought bravely on the Allied side against the Axis powers during World War II. Throughout the Battle of the Atlantic, Mr. Blinkers helped sink more than three Nazi U-Boats. By 1943, Pit had already achieved the rank of captain of the Royal Navy, and was awarded the George Cross for acts of greatest heroism. By the end of the campaign, Mr. Blinkers was personally received by Winston Churchill who feed him little pieces of dry fish while he was placidly floating in a glass bowl.

After World War 2, Mr. Blinkers went on to start a career as an extremely successful writer. A regular columnist at Practical Fishkeeping Monthly, where he was known for his strong views on the Tropical vs Sub-Tropical Algae debate, Mr. Blinkers wrote more than 159 books, including 97 love novels, numerous essay collections and two books of poetry dedicated to his mother Alfonsina, the sexy but tender lionfish who took care of him during his first days at the estuary of the River Plate. "Blinkers was an amazing writer" said legendary Digg editor and famed sea sponge collector Kevin Rose, "his grasp of english language is probably only comparable to Steinbeck. And Stan Lee."

Chandler Blinkers III died on January 9. He never married, but he had a long list of lovers and unrecognized children, including five red herrings, two sardines, twelve monkfish and more than 150 anchovies in tin cans.

(WARNING: while it's absolutely 100% true that a fish died today inside the water tank used to showcase the waterproof cameras at the Panasonic's booth—thanks Tom for the pic and tip—which had to be emptied later, some of the facts about the life of Chandler Blinkers III in this report have been greatly exaggerated for dramatic purposes. In reality, he never wrote two poetry books.)

Chandler Blinkers III, rest in peace. Your friends from Gizmodo will never forget you.

700 MHz auction and analog-to-digital TV switchover
• Martin says the neat stuff he saw at CES last year led in part to the 700MHz auction open-access rules
• He thinks it's "possible" we'll see 700MHz devices within a year—which is why the "hard" analog cutoff date of Feb. 19, 2009 is important
• Speaking of, the cutoff date is engraved in frickin' stone, people—no extensions
• He has no interest in "any particular company winning," just wants someone to make the minimum bid that would enforce open access
• Regarding big bidder Verizon, Martin said it "may win" the auction (Freudian slip?)
• Since poor broadband penetration in rural areas is the main reason we're so far behind Asia, the 700MHz will serve as a good bridge, and might even become the new broadband platform

Cable
• Neither Martin nor CEA chief Gary Shapiro have any love for cable—no wonder the FCC's been reaming them
• "We've seen a signficant decrease in prices" in everything the FCC regulates except cable—that's gonna change
• It is "critical" that consumer-electronic devices are able to attach to cable networks and do two-way communication without a set-top box (i.e., two-way CableCARD is mandatory)
• Proposed pay-per-channel cable is a "real market solution" to cable sucking balls and "I'm doing everything I can" to make it happen
• Independent content providers such as NFL Network need to be able to get their shows on cable

Comcast's Alleged Blockage of BitTorrent
• He's going to investigate it (FCC investigates "all complaints") and make sure no one is being blocked from access in a "discriminatory way"
• If a company engaged in "reasonable network practice" for traffic management they should be honest about it

Satellite Radio and TV
• The FCC will look at XM and Sirius merger proposal "soon," but "isn't sure" it'll clear all the hurdles—awaiting on Department of Justice
• Regarding a potential, but by no means proposed, merger of DirecTV and Dish, he doesn't know whether the XM-Sirius thing would set a precedent; at the bare minimum they'd have to enforce the same price protection XM and Sirius are proposing

Broadband Penetration
• "We've done some very significant steps over the last three years" toward increasing the options for broadband—in particular letting telcos get into IPTV so they'd invest in fiber optic pipes; busting up cable apartment contracts, etc.
• Wants to redefine the term "broadband" to higher speeds—200Kbps is not broadband and people are getting hosed

DRM
• "We need to make sure that consumers have fair use, reasonable expectations" that they can "copy things and use them themselves" which is "not only fair but important, and we need to continue to protect that."
• "I do believe that fair use" and protecting what "consumers are able to do in their home on their devices" is the "guiding principle," and that's a "reasonable and fair" expectation

In sum, more openness, more competition, more consumer protections—in theory. It could be a great year for us across the board at the expense of closed industries, particularly cable and wireless. I actually feel like the government is working for us for a change.

They were really scant on details, but we did squeeze out a date of first quarter this year, so we should it within the next couple of months.