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ridicules the seller saying that the particular item will never sell for the spreadsheet price, which is already outdated.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.
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.
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).