Not sure what the policy on linking to reddit is, but there was a recent discussion in /r/games (this is a subreddit for game discussion only. no memes).
Latest rumor I read was that it was going to ship with Linux (if you google steam box linux you'll find some sources). Price, I haven't heard anything about.
As for advantages, it's probably the same as any other console, which means it comes with the same disadvantages. There will probably be steam box approved games on steam, which you will be sure will work in it, and you may also see some developers targeting it specifically.
But yes, if you know what you're doing, there probably wont be any advantage on choosing this over your own custom built PC. I don't see many developers restricting their games to steam box.
TF2 does have somewhat de-facto items serving as currency, although none of them offer any specific gameplay advantage. They are:
* buds (limited apple Earbuds given for a short period of time): These are worth roughly 2 bill's + some keys, or 24 keys.
* bill's (Bill's Hat, also given for a short period of time for those that preoredered left 4 dead 2) worth around 8 - 10 keys
* keys worth around 2.44 to 2.55 metal
* metal
Everything else is measured around these 4 items. All these prices seem to come from a single source. The "TF2 Spreadsheet", a google docs spreadsheet, created by "the powers that be" which seem to have defined these prices somehow.
It is not a perfect system though, because what generally happens is the values are used as a starting point for a sale. Whoever's selling wants more, declaring that the spreadsheet prices are only a reference, and they know their item sells for more. Whoever's buying usually ridicules the seller saying that the particular item will never sell for the spreadsheet price, which is already outdated.
How trades are made with this system, I don't understand. For those not wanting to deal with all the chaos, there's http://www.tf2wh.com/, which seems to have a rigid credit currency set. Of course it helps that most of the trades are done by bots, so no human interaction is required.
I don't really see the point in Growl, and it is now a payed app, so you could skip it, unless your workflow requires you to be notified of something immediately.
Media player: I prefer mplayerx to VLC. mplayerx is on the app store.
The Growl developers really messed up on this. Growl is now actually something that developers include in their applications, you don't need to install it at all.
You only need to install the app for backwards compatibility with apps that haven't upgraded. Since it was open-source, there is a fork that you can install for free:
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/41038/growl-fork
I agree. The button placement makes sense for commodity sake, and that should trump first use in this case, as it is not something you take long to learn.
I have a touch, and this is one of the small issues I have with it. If I'm holding it with my left hand, my thumb will have to travel a larger distance to turn the page, than if I'm holding it with my right. It's not much of a problem though, and it beats having to physically turn a page. But I wish there was an option to have touching the screen on either side turn the page, and if I want to go back, I could just use the swipe gesture.
As for this guy's first issues, my memory is a little hazy, but I could swear that my kindle came with a drawing of the device in the display clearly indicating where to turn the device on. Is it different on non touch kindles?
I've had a friend banned from facebook for using a nickname, instead of a real name. Facebook may not do it as often, or it may not be as publicized, but they do also have a real name policy in place.
There's a lot more to it than that. Part of it is that Facebook does have a "real names" policy, but they don't actually define what a "real name" is, and they also don't enforce it nearly as recklessly as Google does.
Also, it's important to separate the notion of a "real name" from a legal (wallet) name. A legal name shows up on government issued ID, and is called "legal" because it falls within the law of that government.
A "real" name, to me, is a label that can refer to an individual, animal, place, or thing within a given context. For example, I consider "aestetix" just as real as any other name, and there are some people who have known me for over a decade, solely by "aestetix." To them, it's quite a real name.
But consider people who use different names for political reasons, social reasons, safety reasons, etc. Mark Twain, Voltaire, Richard Bachman (aka Stephen King), and so on all had very legitimate reasons for using a non legal name. Imagine you're trying to post updates on Facebook about awful things your oppressive country is doing to you (think Iran or Syria). Or imagine that you have a stalker who is trying to hunt you down. The list goes on.
I think it's pretty obvious that none of the major websites have thought this stuff out very well.
I think Facebook has thought this stuff out quite well: When people use real names on their service, it's easier for family, friends, and college acquaintances from thirty years ago to find them, thus increasing user engagement with the site. It also gives them an easy excuse to delete troll accounts. Furthermore, having people's real names (and often address etc.) makes them a more attractive target for advertisers. Most of the Facebook biographers seem to agree that the real-name policy was one of the factors that helped it win out over MySpace and other social networks. (Among many, many others, of course.)
In light of how much money this policy is presumably making them, and considering that they have about a billion customers who seem to accept the policy as is, I strongly suspect they don't care in the least that the occasional person with an unusual name falls through the cracks, or that they're screwing over people who need to remain anonymous for legitimate safety reasons.
Do I agree with their decision? Not at all. But I think they know exactly what they're doing.
I disagree with this assessment. People on Facebook tend to use the name by which they'll be most recognized. If your legal name is William Jones but most people know you as Bill Jones, you'll probably be on Facebook as Bill Jones. I don't think there's evidence Facebook has thought it out well, they simply haven't been nearly as idiot in enforcing it.
One point I want to clarify: I do think Facebook knows what they are doing in collecting marketing data, in the same way Bank of America knows what they are doing in holding bank accounts. What they are not doing well is creating an accurate representation of identity online. If you follow Chris Pool's thesis ("Identity is prismatic"), then nobody is doing this well right now.
On the plus side for Facebook, they only care if you get reported by another user. They don't seem to be running any sort of automated "fake name" detector.
On the minus side, some people on Facebook use reporting as a form of trolling, and it appears to be fairly easy to get people kicked off of Facebook with enough flagging persistence. For friends of mine who run a religious ministry, basically everything they post gets flagged, and they regularly get kicked off the site for a few days at a time. They've finally gotten it under control after several long phone conversations with FB support.
Special discounts: We lower the price if you buy more than X amount.
This: We lower the price if you buy more than X amount, and don't buy from the competition.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/2qr7ra/i_know_its_bee...
With the start the game had, there was some surprise there were almost 4000 players at the time.
The gist of the comments are that it is still an awful buggy game, but apparently some people enjoy it (and some even stream it on twitch).