It's the whole thing of deadlines being cowards, and not spacing themselves out sensibly, but hiding behind things and leaping out at people all at once.
Oh well. I should be used to it by now. And I hope the Guardian article will behave tomorrow.
For now, I can report that the Slingbox is indeed a remarkable toy and a wonderful one, and it works as advertised -- I was lucky enough to have an ethernet connection near the TIVO, which meant setting the Slingbox up was relatively easy (except for having to figure out how to open a specific port in the router, which actually was very simple except for me somehow deleting the house's internet service on the way, but I fixed it), and I can now watch my TV (and more importantly, control and watch whatever's on the TIVO) from anywhere in the world I can get a decent internet connection.
Or in the corner of this computer screen. (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10546353/ for more info.)
Having said that, I tend not to miss American TV in the same way I miss UK TV, and so as soon as I had the Slingbox set up I started fantasising about setting up a TIVO-equivalent and a Slingbox in the house of someone in the UK with broadband who wouldn't mind a small heap of electronics in the corner; and then I began wondering how long it would be before someone filled warehouses around the world with cheap hard disks and slingbox-like gadgets and allowed you to subscribe to whatever TV you wanted from wherever in the world...
I meant to post a link to some wonderful cartoons at http://www.truthandbeautybombs.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=4997 -- Garfields with all the animal dialogue gone, transformed into a perfectly paced, rather sad strip about a man whose life is wasted and a cat who says nothing, but they seem to be vanishing from the page...