I'm surprised at how many Comcast customers are watching video on demand.

Really? Why? I use Comcast's VOD all the time. Not necessarily to watch for-pay movies, since the HBO On Demand and all the free stuff is often adequate, but even the for-pay stuff is competitively priced with renting a DVD. I just wish you could get movies at the same time the DVDs come out, but the movie industry is still hung up on their theory that one form of content shouldn't "cannibalize" another.

Personally, I think people who criticize the decisions made by others as "rampant consumerism" do a whole lot more to pollute my personal space than do any number of random piles of discarded Last Best Things. It is, however, your backyard, so fill it up however you want. My personal High Horse Detector censors anything that looks like it belongs in Adbusters anyway.

Yep, you're in the minority. Doesn't make your way better or worse, just different. It's the essence of the Linux v. everything else debate - would you rather have incredibly granular control over everything but do more work, or cede control to Apple or AOL or whoever and get to be lazier? The mass market clearly prefers the latter. Ubergeeks prefer the former. Isn't choice grand?

And as to the actual point, a version of Winamp that is actually competitive would be great, and might spur Apple to actually innovate in iTunes. I suspect it's too little, too late at this point, however, barring a major fumble from Cupertino.

I don't see any irony here at all, really. Life's about tradeoffs, and in the grand scheme of things, electric tools are green. Unless you're growing your own food, walking everywhere you go, and powering that laptop with solar panels on your roof, you're making your own tradeoffs. I suppose I could mow the grass with a reel mower, clip the hedges with a hand clipper and trim the grass with a set of shears, if I was independently wealthy and didn't have to work at a real job.