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There's a Sucker Converted Every Minute
Ponca City, We love you writes "Once the US converts from analog to digital broadcasting next February, those who receive their signals over the air will need a converter box for older, non-digital models. Government-approved converter boxes sell for $60 or less and a government-issued $40 rebate coupon is available for the asking but that hasn't stopped companies like the Ohio-based Universal TechTronics from offering supposedly free converter boxes. The gimmick: the box is free, as long as you pay $88 for a five-year warranty, plus $9.30 shipping. Universal TechTronics seems to specialize in 'high-tech' products of questionable value, marketing the Cool Surge portable air cooler, 'a work of engineering genius from the China coast so advanced that no windows, vents, or freon are needed' that uses the same energy as a 60-watt light bulb. It works by blowing a stream of air over two ice packs that you have previously frozen in your freezer. What's the best tech scam you've heard of lately?"
"We have to filter P2P to solve network congestion"--Bell Canada.
If you haven't been down-modded lately, you aren't trying.
Sacred cows make the best hamburger.
Electric Universe?
DVD rewinders.
I just got a new Laptop with it installed. The laptop is just used for web, email, and MS Office type of stuff. It's not bad. It's not as big a pig as everyone states. The networking seams to be a little better. The only thing I can complain about is things that I don't like about Windows in general. I don't understand why everyone hates it so much.
But hey, I'm an AC - a Slashdot Dreg.
The "free" digital TV box gimmick is not necessarily a scam. Comparing a box with a 5 year warranty to one with a 1 year warranty is not a fair comparison. It's gimmicky pricing to make people think they're getting a great deal. A scam, on the other hand, requires deception to secure an unfair or unlawful gain. In this case, the user is getting a 5 year warranty rather than the typical 1 year warranty, so it is understandable the overall cost should be higher, meaning it's not an unfair or unlawful gain.
(It could be argued that warranties aren't worth the paper they're written on. If a warranty is not workable, that's the part you can call a scam, not the gimmicky pricing.)
I've seem some scams recently, but the most amazing has to be Kinoki Foot Pads. Let's ignore the fact that my understanding is the word "kinoki" is meaningless and the characters they use in the ad don't even read "kinoki".
I'm used to all sorts of pseudo science in TV ads, but this one is downright amazing. Did you know tree roots are used to dispose of chemicals, and that my feet are actually tree roots? I'm so glad someone told me. I especially love the list of conditions that these things can cure. Even if they weren't fake and actually would detoxify you, I seriously doubt it would even touch many of those conditions. I seem to remember reading someone wrapped carrots with the pads just to prove that anything will make them blacken from "toxins".
The ad id just amazing. I was dumbfounded the first time I saw it. Diet pill ads look like something out of the Mayo Clinic in comparison.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
that when you buy them, automagically remove all of the CO2 you contributed to global warming out of the atmosphere and make you carbon neutral.
It seems to violate the law of thermodynamics in that CO2 molecules are destroyed somehow, and proves itself to be very unscientific.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
"It works by blowing a stream of air over two ice packs that you have previously frozen in your freezer." means = "no freon"?
Well, then I'm also selling water-free water for places that have water shortages. Just add 1 cup of water to the device and you will have an entire cup of water that you can drink!
New webcomic updated on Sundays: HERE
The 'coupon' you can get that covers 40 bucks of the price expires. Sometimes before people can actally find a converter box.
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
So, if I have spare room in my freezer and it's already running 24/7, does it take more energy if there's more items in it?
I assume freezers operate based on cooling the air to, say, -5C. If that's the case, if something has a high specific heat (like water) it doesn't take more energy for it to cool it, it just takes longer for it to cool.
So, that ice-pack AC-like machine would use less electricity (if you don't use your freezer for food)?
Not that it's so practical since you'd constantly need to be changing and refreezing the packs, but it might be greener in that respect. Of course, getting a smaller freezer would probably be even greener.
Am I completely off base?
You don't need techobabble to put one over on people ...
Just look at the erpackaging of crap loans and blessing them with AAA ratings, and the proposal to bail out those who participated in the scam.
Time was, the three biggest lies were "The check is in the mail", "I'll still love you in the morning", and "I won't come in your mouth."
Now its "Mission Accomplished!", "Housing prices never go down," and "Jebus loves you- gimme money!"
How many watts does a 60 watt lightbulb use?
Do you mean other than those $60 converter boxs and $40 Government coupons that expire in less than 80 days after people receive them? The coupons are a great deal for the importers and sellers, but in reality the customer ends up paying about whet they would if there were no coupon program, perhaps more when you realize they pay sales tax on the entire ticket price. In a world where I can buy a DVD player in a local store for $29 or less, these much simpler converter boxes should not be costing $60.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Well, the cell phone antenna booster "stickers" were probably the single best tech scam. It combined laughably ineffective "technology" with the always successful price-so-low-it-doesn't-matter-if-they-don't-work.
More recently, I'm still astounded by the number of "BOOST YOUR MPG!" schemes that involve additives or random crap shoved in your air intake. I especially love the accusations from promoters that the auto manufacturers are in it with the oil companies. GM and Ford are both facing a very real possibility of chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the word is that Cerberus is quietly readying a giant hammer of doom over at Chrysler. If all it took was a $2 piece of metal to get 9 more mpg out of a Malibu, don't you think they'd have done it by now? See the cell phone boosters for the basic premise: if you only charge $40 for one of these things, people won't be too pissed when they find out that it doesn't work.
There are many MLM schemes that differentiate themselves from the regular Amway crowd by pitching websites that MAKE YOU MONEY. I was actually approached by two different classmates about five years ago regarding the scheme, and it was so comically bad to anyone with any kind of tech knowledge that you couldn't help but laugh. Picture MLM combined with an Amazon-style referral bonus for online purchases. Now charge someone $400 to participate, and charge extra for adding basic things to their company website. Now make sure the websites resemble GeoCities circa 1997. Now we're talking!
My other favorite is the speaker scam, which someone tried to pull on me about two weeks ago (I hadn't heard of these for years). It's not really a tech scam, just your basic grift that happens to involve technology: an "installer" got an extra set of speakers/surround sound system/plasma TV accidentally loaded in his van for a big install job. Last time this happened, his boss reamed him a new one for not noticing in the first place, then sold them and kept the cash himself. Installer figures he'd "cut out the middleman" and you look like the kind of guy who knows good equipment. Usually they're selling actual speakers or receiver (the plasma scams generally involved an oven door in a box with a window), and they often have some custom-made audio magazine with their brand of speaker on the cover and a great review inside. You end up buying $20 worth of garbage for $200. Dogg Digital and Kirsch were the big names in the white van speaker scam years ago. Google them for an entertaining and depressing look at human nature.
I have a 20 month old Samsung 46" LCD TV. It now needs over $700 in repairs because of one of two blown video boards. So if had paid for the extended warranty I would already paid in that $700 - so it's a wash either way. If I paid $700 for the TV (e.g a smaller one), with or without any warranty at all, it's actually cheaper to throw the TV off the fucking roof and get a new one.
It could be the fact you need a dual core machine with 2 gigs to browse the web now.
It's a Lenovo 3000 with 2GHz Celeron and with 1 GB of RAM.
Works FAST.
Vista is working quite fine for me. I guess other brands don't know how to install Vista correctly or something.
Retailers love to offer 5 year extended warranty because of the Bathtub Curve.
Basically if a product does n't fail within one year then the probability it failing within five year years is very very low.
This curve applies very well to consumer electronics with the added advantage that they depreciate in value quickly too.
http://www.qray.com/
Of course, Made in Eureka...
Don't underestimate the power of The Source
Has the Gov tried to bring charges against terrorists? What's their success rate? 'Nuff said.
That type of cooler is called an evaporative or swamp cooloer. It's no air conditioner, but it can be effective in some cases and is definitely not a tech scam.
"Even when I say nothing it's a beautiful use of negative space." - Indelible, "Fire In Which You Burn"
You want a tech scam? Have it: Just type Car runs on water in Google; Sit back and enjoy! http://www.runningcaronwater.com/?gclid=COnhtJPKqZQCFRZZiAod_mOtzw http://www.runcarbywater.com/ http://www.youralternativefuelsite.com/?gclid=CLyItLbKqZQCFQwxiQodyUlR0A http://www.runcaronwaterkit.com/?kk=142 http://hybridfuelreview.info/?id=B227023 http://savemorefuel.info/?t202id=9163299&t202kw=car%20runs%20on%20water http://www.waterfuelx.com/?hop=tracassoc&gclid=CJne49_KqZQCFQL8iAodz2TG0Q http://www.trustmymechanic.com/run-your-car-on-water.html?gclid=CNjKkujKqZQCFSBciAodV1U90A http://www.mobilemag.com/content/100/354/C8115/ http://www.squidoo.com/carrunsonwater http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5EMoLMzB-Y http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/gadgets/car-runs-on-water-inventor-to-be-kidnapped-by-exxon-177716.php http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water-fuelled_car http://www.reuters.com/news/video?videoId=84561 http://www.easywatercar.com/2books.htm
...doesn't require a dual-core, 2Gb setup, I find I can browse just fine with my Athlon XP w/ 700Mb RAM. But then, I'm running a Linux distro, and NOT Vista. Suppose that makes a difference? :)
First, you have to accept that you can't just create "heat" or "cold" from nothing, nor can you destroy it. You can, however, move it from one place to another. As water freezes into ice, it absorbs "cold" from the local environment. Similarly, when it melts, it releases the "cold" into the surroundings. That's how the ice-pack air conditioner works.
"Hot" and "cold" are basically the same thing, only with opposite polarities. The above thermal exchange could be viewed as "melting ice absorbs heat" and "freezing ice releases heat." So the thing you really need to worry about is the ice pack moving heat into your freezer. With more items in the freezer, you have a bigger "cold" buffer which will offset the "heat" dumped into the freezer by the freezing water. Remember, "heat" can't be destroyed, only moved. It's just a matter of time until the "heat" accumulates to a problematic level.
I run a small business on the side, helping people deal with Catastrophic Retention of Accumulated Pthermions in their home refrigeration systems. For a nominal fee, I can have a crew come over and purge the pthermions from your freezer, ensuring years of continued, reliable service.
And government who is working for MaFIAA, too!
I bought a DVD VCR combo from Frys that only recorded to the VHS tape. I only learned this when I took it home and read the manual. The sign on the shelf clearly called it a 'DVR' even said it was 'compatible with DVD+-R' but not that it recorded to DVD. I had to take it back. They said that the sign was not misleading saying that a DVD player was 'digital' and the VCR was the 'video recorder' part. Then I had my wife try to take it back and she had no problems. I wonder if it was a scam or incompetence.
But, which Vista? There are many, and the baseline versions don't run Aero. Got Aero?
Vista Home Basic. So, no Aero. But so what? I said it's running fine with what I'm using it for. Regardless if it's Vista or not, if you're running intensive stuff and your hardware isn't up for it, it's going to be slow.
I mean, if I were running Fedora 9 on a PII/500MB with Apache, MySQL, and GNOME, and then complained about how slow and sluggish it was, everyone would be up my ass.
So, I guess if Windows Vista is too slow, shut some unneeded shit off. Geeze! Get a life!
These audiophile things offend me. I realize some people like to mess with their hardware to make it look pretty in their eyes (ricers, for example) but to claim such "behind-the-scenes" hardware mods do anything except drain the bank accounts of the ignorant is beyond the pale and simply a scam perpetrated by those who know better.
Heat pumps can move far more heat than the energy they consume doing it. So much so, that people are now using them to warm their homes, as well as cool them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_source_heat_pump
AC is expensive because people design houses and offices with giant windows which both let the sunshine in and keep the heat from getting out. And then build them in Texas.
Natural decomposition via bacteria, fungi, cows, whatever you want to mention releases almost all the trapped carbon back into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide(at best) or methane (which has a GWP of about 40tCO2/t). You can tell that this is an important effect because the ground is not entirely coal.
"The universe is made of tiny little strings vibrating together."
I love that the Cool Surge link appears to have a referral code:
http://www.coolsurge.com/index.cfm?DropCode=CSWG8&gclid=CL76seeoqZQCFQKaFQodHEFWtg
1. Write article denouncing scams
2. (??? has been replaced with:) Refer people to scam
3. Profit!
...laser rot? You could buy a green Magic Marker for about $20, paint the edges of your CDs with it, and not worry about the laser rotting the bits off.
Or the $400 Denon Cat5 cable only last week?
And there was a $10 gadget heavily advertised in general-interest magazines in the Seventies, especially Sunday supplements, that was designed to LOOK as if you could pirate cable TV with it. You just hooked it up to the antenna terminals on your TV and presto, you would get "the same type of programs you'd get on cable" -- i.e., sports, movies, news -- but you wouldn't have to pay monthly bills "because you're not getting cable!" What it was, was a rabbit-ears antenna with a plastic disk in the middle shaped like a dish antenna.
The prose in the ad was a masterpiece of subtlety. There was not a single misstatement of fact in it, but innumerable people read as a pitch for something like the pirate HBO setups that were in the news then.
rj
http://www.best-teeth-whitening.com/
It's actually a fake but it doesn't directly try to sell you the product in question. It just claim it's the best, better than other well known brand teeth whitening product.
It's a little bottle of some white solution and a tooth pick like bush. It doesn't say what's in it. You are suppose to apply the stuff with the bush to your teeth. How is that stuff going to stay on the teeth? It just doesn't work!
It's the same as saying "my car runs on electricity, it's completely pollution free and carbon neutral!"
Hydrogen is not a fuel. It's a way of storing and transporting energy. That energy has to come from somewhere - generally fossil or nuclear fueled power plants. Free hydrogen does not naturally exist on earth, it has to be manufactured, stored and transported at enormous cost in energy. The overall efficiency is crap.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
Q: What's the best tech scam you've heard of lately? A: Windows Vista.
Have you requested your free converter box from Uncle Sam yet? I certainly have! And no, I don't receive over-the-air television ... I've got DirecTV and I'm quite happy with it. But with the coupons, I can get a couple of free boxes with power supplies and RF modulators in them ... quite nice for various geek projects! One of them will probably be fitted as a simple RF modulator appliance so my son can play video games on his TV which only has an antenna input. The other ... who knows? Who cares? It's free! (More accurately, it's already paid for; it doesn't even begin to make up for the thousands of dollars the government steals from me each year.)
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
. . . gee, this story conjures up memories of Ronco ads for Ginsu's, Spiral Slicers, Pocket Fisherman's and *-O-Matics.
"In Japan, the hand can be used as a knife!"
"But this doesn't work on a digital television signal!"
Maybe a really humongous Cool Surge might be the answer to global warming?
Now that I have too much money to spend on high-tech gadgets that I don't need, I really feel the urge to buy a Spiral Slicer, and have a whack at a sack of potatoes . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
The problem with high-def TV is a crap TV show is still crap even in HD.
(and probably other places)
[ Yes, people really are that stupid. ]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I can't imagine any of them work. But many must order them for the companies to keep running adverts.
Do nothing! Comcast has you covered for your digital conversion!
Then later, when you want to leave Comcast, you'll not only have to pay to receive television, but you'll have to pay more, because you won't get the federal subsidy.
Not a scam, per se, but a sleazy way for Comcast to get the effect of a termination clause, and it only costs their customers $40.
While we're at throw in some of the many other items compliments of the current US administration.
HDMI cables at the retail level are a scam. Best Buy sells a basic 6.5 foot HDMI cable for $60. I can get a 10-foot cable at a local computer shop, in bulk packaging, for $13. But Monster Cable is the worst. $80 for a 4-foot HDMI? Please. USB and firewire are equally as bad. $20 for a retail 10-foot usb, but $3 at a local shop.
Holy Christ. What *are* they teaching the kids in school these days? Why don't you do yourself a favor and learn about the Carbon Cycle:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_cycle
The CO2 in the atmosphere is constantly being recycled back into the earth and out again. If it weren't, we wouldn't even be alive right now. The carbon in the dead tree will go into the soil and into other plants and animals. Sure, some of the carbon from the tree that goes into animals will be respirated back out into the atmosphere as CO2, but that CO2 will be pulled from the atmosphere in the form of plants, or as carbonate rock - etc., etc., etc.. It's a never ending cycle. The Carbon Cycle has been going on since long before man walked the earth and will continue long after we're gone.
Treating easily replicated digital bits exactly the same as tangible commodities, by (relatively) newly written laws and by industry practice, creating a purely artificial scarcity business model.
Digital copying is a huge game changing tech advancement, and society has fallen flat on dealing with it. It is one of the few "star trek" level tech advances in the past few generations, yet we can see that business society has freaked out, it made a lot of the older practices virtually unneeded, and wants both to be able to use this tech freely for themselves, and also to be able to restrict it to others, entirely in their favor following the old and now obsolete so called "laws" of supply and demand as they might pertain to such products today. There is the potential for unlimited and "so close to free it doesn't matter" supply now, so they are trying to restrict it through DRM and laws and lawsuits such as they can still extract the same (or more) level of profits "per unit" as when back in the day they had to actually publish a dead trees book or stamp out a vinyl album, etc.
What will we be seeing when we can do such replication as easy with tangible objects, if we can't even embrace and adapt to digital copies? This effort is not only ill conceived it should be *embarassing* to humanity in general, why it is even contemplated. We all should be enjoying the big freedom to freely share and share alike and have a huge expensive burden of transferring knowledge and culture from each of us and to all of us removed from our backs so we can concentrate on the next tech hurdles that could ultimately lead to humans being able to universally exist without a huge amount of drudgery and dangerous labor. Isn't that some sort of goal anyway?
It won't happen all at once, but every time we lick a major tech problem, like we have with copies of this or that chunk of knowledge or culture, why should we -or even allow- go out of our way to create an additional problem just to perpetuate the old problem, which has been solved now? This is illogical and makes no long view historical sense. Unless we want the space aliens to start calling this the planet of the buggywhip traders (part of the embarrassing part)
disclaimer: all I can do is not be hypocritical about it. I have a ton of digital stuff on the net over the past decade, if anyone thinks it might be useful (stop laffing!), take a copy share a copy, go for it. I work ag in meatspace, I encourage everyone who is so inclined to get seeds and "grow their own copies", use open pollinated so you can share copy making potential, go for it, feed yourself and the planet as cheaply and nutritiously as possible, leading to all free someday when the tech gets better. I seek no DRM restrictions or patents or any of that other nonsense on your ability or desire to produce your own food, even if that means I might theoretically make less, I'll be much happier once everyone is fed for cheap or free, and will go on to do something else. And that's the best I think I can do right now with voluntary sharing.
Biggest tech scam right now, period.
Demand paging with a unified buffer cache is a difficult concept for laymen to grasp. They tend to think of memory being a finite resource that is used up, rather than simply another caching layer for permanent storage.
So what would be a good, simple number we can use to gauge an operating system's memory efficiency? Working set size? Pageins and pageouts on a typical workload?
The average person needs a number, at least some kind of letter grade.
There's also the idea that even with a unified buffer cache, an operating system can be memory-inefficient - bloated data structures and inefficient page-aging algorithms can make that 2GB of RAM seem like 1GB.
Is there any simple gauge of how well an operating system uses memory?
The Clarins Expertise 3P spray ranks up there in the top bracket on my list of tech scams. http://www.strangeharvest.com/mt/archive/the_harvest/spray_on_magnet_1.php Here's some of the juice on the spray... "An ultra-sheer screen mist containing a pioneering combination of plant extracts capable of protecting the skin from the accelerated-ageing effects of all indoor and outdoor air pollution but most significantly, the effects of Artificial Electromagnetic Waves." Apparently the British government didn't take too kindly to the marketing of the product.
Not a tech one, but very similar to the one you just described: There is a company called "World Reserve Monetary Exchange" which advertises in major newspapers like USA Today. They trick you into buying normal, non-collector-quality presidential dollar coins, which you can get at the bank, for ridiculous prices.
For a while, they were offering "free" presidential dollars, where they were only "free" if you bought the expensive case, and they wouldn't give you the coins without the case.
Recently they've been marketing back-dated state quarters, which they sell in rolls (these rolls, you can say, are "proprietary", since they're not normal bank coin rolls), also at ridiculous prices. They market them as "These coins are so valuable, and they stopped making them, so buy some now!" except that they are the same state quarters that circulate in our pockets every day, NOT proof or otherwise collector-oriented coins.
Yep, there's a sucker born every minute...
They aren't "much simpler". An ATSC tuner is a very complex device. Only recently have chipsets with good performance and low cost become available.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
...that you can 'subscribe to'(for money) to get links to tech stories earlier than the non-subscribers. Yes, paying for links to other stories, earlier than anyone else would see it.
Like really, who the heck would pay for THAT? :)
It is really sad that we have come to the point that people don't consider it a scam when a product that is advertised as "Free" costs over $90.
The scam so nice they remarketed it twice! These handy dandy foot pads, using an "Ancient Japanese Secret", drain the toxins from your feet in exactly the same way a tree's toxins flow out through their roots (?!?). How do you know it works? You adhere a pad to each foot, and wear it while you sleep, and lo and behold, it's a different color when you wake up in the morning! Thanks to a little iron oxide in the pads reacting to the sweat from your feet.
https://www.buykinoki.com/
That's pretty much it, and plenty of suckers have bought into it.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
and monster cables.
uhhh. All fuel injection, auto ecus, injectors, sensors and backwards foriegn diagrams. Calling all prescotts single core, as they smp fold at home faster than a core 2 duo...while using less power. oh god. intel almost got my mulah again. Allow me to set my affinity to the invisible #2 and watch from a distance .... ouch. the pga pricked me into a perfect spot.
the fan over ice is almost smarter..wait...it is smarter than all automobile air conditioning . what in freakin hell is up with ac and ridiclous pumps demand? it is cheaper to hire someone to agitate the freon in a alcohol shaker and elctricity free... theres a gap missing in alot of things, and needs laws about engineering integrity, truthfully. I hope I am not the only unblind. time to make bankrupts in the name of God. Whose god? my god. I am crazy enough to babble on street corners.And for my gods sake make at least 20million more carbed 1987 subarus with dual range 5 speeds and 15 inch wheels. Keep the retarded a/c while I am at it...shove that 40mpg up your electric tailpipe. I'm gonna have a roll-your-own cigarette. light filtered tubes and light tobacco soothing the jet fuel burns.
First mentioned in Space Quest 5, where you had to drink it while travelling in the desert, now available in stores. See the website to purchase.
The local summer carnival type thing started up this weekend. Inside they have dozens of booths of "as seen on TV" type products. Guys demo'ing knives, you name it.
Anyway, one of the products is the latest in the detox snakeoil business. The funny part was their sign: "Detox is the latest Buzz Word!".
They were seriously advertising something as a fad, and claiming that "buzzword" had a positive connotation. I was completely floored.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
I don't avoid extended warranties because I figure I'll just fix things myself and save money that way.
I avoid them because in the 10+ years I've seen them for sale, not a single electronic anything I've bought has needed one. Not one. Every single electronic device I've owned in that time has either failed within the first year or so (manufacturer's warranty), or well after any extended warranty would have gone for. Or is still working, many years later.
That's 3 TVs, 2 DVD players, a home theatre system, 3 laptops, enough desktop PC parts to build 10 or 12 systems, 3 MP3 players, 2 GPS units, 4 video game consoles, and 3 digital cameras, just off the top of my head. The extended warranty on all these would have ended up costing me thousands of dollars. Much better to just save all that money, and in the once-in-a-blue-moon event that something does break, buy a new one.
Maybe I'm just phenomenally lucky, or maybe I just take care of my stuff. I don't know, but I'm astounded that anyone would ever buy an extended warranty. Maybe for a person who only ever buys one thing a decade...
Consumer electronics just aren't that fragile.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
Someone, somewhere paid $25 dollars for a solar powered clothes drier: 10 feet of rope.
(If so, why haven't I died yet?)
There water is so pure that it cures diseases such as Multiple Sclerosis.
(So, this water can reach my brain???) Their purifying machine even unclogged sewage.
(Haven't heard about this on the news...)
They even said the secret is that the bonding angle is at a perfect 104 degree angle compared to other water.
(FYI, that is the normal angle...)
Also, they say don't listen to the doctors or other people because they are JEALOUS
(OK, so, how jealous are they over your water...?)
I read the ad because I was just bored... :)
I think big cities are partially to blame, everything they need has to be transported in to them, nothing actually comes from big cities that much, stuff comes from the countryside and the outskirts mostly. Big cities main export is governmental BS and what passes as "culture"..like gangstah rap! And also because of the corporate practice, a carryover from when it was manadatory before electronics was developed and communications became easy, of having central command giant ego office towers that force people to commute to them when all they do more or less is electronic office work that can be done at home. Forget efficient commuting using mass transit, that is still wasteful; as all get out, no different from driving SUVs around, because a ton of it is *not needed*, it is done, but it isn't needed. Just eliminate commuting all together whenever possible. This is the digital age, why are people still "going to the office" like it is the Dicksonian ages with quill pens, to stare at a computer screen and mash the print button? that's crazy stuff now, just mega silly. Collaboration can be done over the net. Eliminate the entire middleman as much as possible of moving people instead of moving electrons, then people can stay home, and we won't need to waste as much resources keeping those giant buildings up, or even constructing them in the first place. Just the sheer *waste* building those looming office towers is appalling. And cities screw up nature, no place for rainwater to soak in, Most trees that are there struggle, the only nature you see is ghetto rabbits and skyrats mostly, they trap heat and poisonous pollution gases and so on and screw up the weather downwind from where they are. Personally, I wouldn't raise a kid inside big cities now, I think it is borderline abuse just from the pollution they soak in 24/7 while their brains and bodies are developing.. We probably wouldn't even be having a fuel crisis right now if as many people who could work at home just did so. I think a lot of these pro giant cities people just have never thought it through all the way, they skip the bad parts of it, gloss over it. big cities came about from the necessity of face to face with trade and transportation way back in ye olden days, a lot of them are on the old river routes and ocean ports, but now...no need for all that face to face all the time, they exist from *inertia*. People went to the suburbs en masse when they could because they wanted to, they wanted out of the big cities, a lot of humans actually need some green around them, and then you *do* have space for a decent garden and a yard where the kids and dogs can play safely.
As to space for food, urban guerrila gardening, on wasted public lands and over grown weedy unkempt lots, rooftop gardening, etc, are all viable. There's a huge movement in cuba now to do mass scale urban gardening and it is actually working out quite well. You don't need a ton of space per person, a 10 foot by 10 foot square in total size will give a lot of food during the season. Heck, I once went nuts in a second floor apartment I had that had a few sunny windows and one little sunroom on the south side, at one time I had over 200 houseplants in there, including a lot of veggies (no pot though..). I even had a baby apple tree growing in there and some sunflowers that reached to the ceiling that had peas and cucumbers climbing them. It worked OK as a daily small salad provider. Oh ya, a couple rose bushes! That made that apt smell pretty nice all the time. On the cheap and small all you need is a 5 gallon plastic bucket or two, a bag of dirt from the garden center, and a sunny window. Throw a tomato and a pepper plant in there, done, healthy snacks. I've kept the same tomatoe plants growing for years before inside apartments, I mean, ya, your traditional ferns are cool, but why not some tomatoes or something else you like? the colored lettuces are all nice and grow like crazy. spinach is easy, radishes are fast and throw a lot of green around the room. Big fun, cheap eats, you are paying the rents anyway, might as well get a little payback from the windows!
I know a woman (not very well) who gets paid $30 an hour to make high-end audio cables. Like, the kind of cables that sell for $1,000 each (as part of a $30,000 package). I think it takes them a couple of hours to make the cable (I'm not sure why exactly; they do everything from scratch though, and they filter and QA ruthlessly at each step so only something like 1 in 15 cables that they start making are completed to an acceptable level of quality and end up being sold to a customer.)
I don't know if it's a scam, but it doesn't seem to be. If audiophiles are willing to shell out $1,000 for a set of cables, why not supply them with what they want? So they make the best damn cables they possibly can. The guy who started the company has a PhD and spent years experimenting with different materials, etc. trying to make better and better cables. Now they have something like 30 people working for them, assembling these $1,000+ cables. And they get paid almost as much as I do.
Is it an honest day's work? Are they ripping off their customers? I don't know. It seems like their customers want to be ripped off--or at least, want to be able to brag to their other Hollywood friends that they have a $30,000 speaker system with the best damn cables money can buy.
This is my most recent favorite: http://www.fastspells.com/
It's a pretty standard web shopping cart system, where you buy spells. Not that you can perform, mind you. You're paying for them to do hoodoo. No proof or anything, but they do guarantee their work.
My favorite part is that they link out to a review site, ratethecaster.com, an independent site that says how good they are. Which just happens to be on the same IP.
BEST SCAM EVAR!!!
There really is "Dasani concentrate". "Dasani" is purified tap water to which some minerals have been added. The mineral mix is sold to bottlers by the Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta. This is the standard Coca-Cola business model; Coke works the same way.
Parent post is +5, insightfully wrong.
The "free" digital TV box gimmick is not necessarily a scam. ... A scam, on the other hand, requires deception to secure an unfair or unlawful gain.
The deception is advertising as "free" something that costs money. If you have a coupon for a free cheeseburger, and they charged you $88, wouldn't you be displeased?
Stewart's law: it always costs more to get something "free" than to just buy it.
Hint: if they want you to pay for it, it isn't free.
If the widget with the 5 year warranty is $88, and you can't get the one without the other, no part of it is free; there's an $88 minimum per transaction.
This is a very common kind of scam, even used by come companies that are otherwise considered reputable, but it's always a scam.
I find that pretty hard to accept. Sure, the chip may be complex, but certainly also is a DVD player, which contains a precision optics electro-mechanical device, as well as sharing many things in common with a converter box. This isn't exactly brand new technology, one local station here has been broadcasting in HD since 1966. If the industry has been dragging their feet on producing devices (and it certainly seems that they have been), that just might be because they saw these $40 coupons as a government goldmine and lobbied for them and waited for them. And as to chips, you know what they say, the first one costs a million bucks, the next ones are a penny a piece. I really doubt that there is much that you could say to convince me that a DTV converter should cost over twice what a DVD player costs, or that there are really free market forces at work here. As soon as the coupons are no longer available, the price will drop fast. Perhaps delayed a little because of whatever inventory is in the supply chain that the retailers have already overpaid for and will try to pass that inflated price along to the consumer, but it will be kept artificially inflated by the coupon program until then.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The receiver circuits are much more complex than the transmitter circuits. It has to do decoding for error correction, which is always harder than doing the encoding. The major problem with ATSC tuners has been handling multipath. A great deal of effort and money has been spent on improving the performance of the tuners under conditions of severe multipath. That's why the latest tuner designs work so much better than those designed just a few years ago. Besides R&D and design costs, the transistor count has increased. Despite that, the end user cost has greatly decreased. The first ATSC tuners were more than $1000 and their performance was terrible on real-world signals. The previous generation of boxes cost more than $200. The current boxes are a bargain and a good example of how mass production can drive down costs and prices.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
The reason a ton is useful is that people know how fast ice melts. They know (roughly) that a ton is a heckuva lot of ice. When you tell them your A/C is a "2 ton unit" they can then get an idea of how much energy is used - a lot more than just mentioning a figure in kW.
I have NO IDEA on how fast ice melt, and I am a physicist (*). I bet whatever you want the average joe on the street won't have an idea either. As for knowing a ton is huge... Well no shit sherlock. Does that help your average A/C unit buyer ? Not at all. On the other hand, 3.5 kwh means I know how much I will pay on my next electricity bill (which are not counted in tons). And that tell 95% of the world how much energy will the A/C unit consume. And I bet your average US consumer would be more happier knowing one A/C consume 3.5 kwh than 2 tons for the same aforementioned reason. Combine that with a clearly defined efficiency and you are all set.
(*) but I can talk to your hours long about boring forbidden transition n-sigma*
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Frequency grease.
A listing on ebay lists High Quality 24K Gold Electro-Plated Connectors, High Purity OFC Copper for High Transmission Speed, Anti-Interference Ferrite Filters as well as Anti-Noise, High Density Shields & Ability to Restore the Signal, as some of the features of there TOS Link optical audio cable. I found this one very funny.. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2m-Gold-TOSLink-Optical-Cable-TOS-Link-Lead-XBox-PS2_W0QQitemZ290243153497QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item290243153497&_trkparms=72%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C65%3A12&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14
de centralized power in the form of billions of solar PV modules could help eliminate any new huge transmission lines being needed. My theory is, if it's a roof sitting in the hot sun, it needs to be covered with solar panels. And the government wouldn't need to do much more than a few lines on a new law authorizing 100% tax credits up to..some level determined, around 20 thousand amortized over five tax seasons would be sufficient I guess. Not partial credits or deductions, full credits. The slack in taxes there could be made up elsewhere as new manufacturing and service industries grew, with the end game result of a lot more energy independence. Last place we lived as caretakers was mostly all solar powered, a 29 thou installation did the bulk of the circuits for the owners three story mini-mansion. I've lived with it and seen it work, awesome. That and also use the same form of credits for just more insulation, and mandate better energy efficiency standards for new construction and deed/title transfers.
As to cities, to be clear, I am not saying tear them all down, but help people who can and want to not be forced to live there or be forced to commute there to have a viable option or two. I have no idea what the real figures might be, but there simply has to be millions of jobs that can be done at home that are currently being done by commuters to the cities.
One of the things that is just driving me up the wall in nearly all of the advertisements about HD television is how it is so much better and improved over analog television.
I'll agree that in a rough technical sense there are more pixels than analog television, and under "ideal conditions" perhaps you get a better quality viewing experience. But I don't buy for a minute that analogy television is any better or worse than digital television.... it is only different.
For myself, I would rather have some occasional snow in my viewing picture and some background noise in the sound channel than having some awful MPEG artifacting, pops, clicks, chirps, and other audio artifacts that happen when digital signals start to seriously degrade. Or worse, right in the middle of some discussion you are seeing on the television the frame suddenly freezes or is jerky and only updates every 10 seconds or so with the audio dropping out entirely.
From my own experience, HD television is giving me far worse "quality of service" than analog television ever did... and rural areas are getting shafted even worse than in the days of analog television as well. Reception is worse, and dead spots that had problems with analog television are going to be even worse still.
The only thing that HD television has going for it right now is that some video engineers did have a chance to review the new standards with quite a bit of experience under their belts when it was developed. Analog television had decades of backward compatibility to earlier standards to work with including having to support the older B&W devices.
In spite of all of the advertisements about digital television, there are going to be a whole bunch of people pissed at the government, television stations, and others when the analog transmitters go off the air.
Well, I don't want civil war, but I sure would like to see a more realistic and equitable split in the worth of this or that area of the nation and between urban and rural. I really don't think a lot of pure urbanites understand how their lives and lifestyles are so very much tied to a healthy and robust rural economy and infrastructure, so they dismiss it out of hand.
As for myself, I saw the upcoming economic collapse starting around the late 90s so I moved back rural. When I was a kid I listened and paid attention to my older relatives stories about the great depression, and when I saw all the same clues they mentioned that were the prelude to that, I knew the same result would be coming. And it isn't really rocket surgery, it's just seeing trends, reading and understanding some history, noting that human behavior isn't all that different from thousands of yearts ago, and having the ability to work simple sums.. the economy isn't even near done collapsing, and that's reality, I won't even put it in the speculation category anymore. The monetary supply is inflated WAY beyond any sort of rationality, and they have pushed magic beans paper financial products into the realms of clinical insanity. There is no possible way to avoid collapse, none, it doesn't exist, it isn't even theoretically possible at this point..
Being poor and broke in the cities is an absolute no win situation, at least in the rural areas you have some immediate and onsite fallback positions for life's necessities. And all these highly paid folks now in the cities will be almost helpless to do anything about their situations once those big checks stop coming in, or even if they hang onto their jobs, a really big *if* right now, that money simply won't be enough to cover the basics, although their contractual debts will remain intact.
Sometimes it's the obvious scams that get us. I especially love those religions that 'suggest' members pay 10% of their income to the church.
The deception is advertising as "free" something that costs money. If you have a coupon for a free cheeseburger, and they charged you $88, wouldn't you be displeased?
If that wasn't made clear before I entered into a contract, yes, but that is not the likely case here. If they took your details, gave you the box, then deceived you by charging for the warranty later on, that's a scam. If you know about the warranty before entering into contract, it's not a scam.
Your argument does not make logical sense, even though it successfully appeals to the emotions. If, say, Toyota offered you a free car, but you still had to pay for the registration, insurance, and so forth, does that mean the car is no longer "free"?
It depends how you view the purchase, whether holistically or in a logical sense based on the individual components of the transaction. You appear to be looking at the TV box transaction holistically, whereas I am just duly itemizing the cost of the various parts of the transaction. There is room for both arguments, and while only one is strictly logically correct, the other may be more pragmatic in scope.
I'll grant you that it's not high-tech and that it's crappy and deceptive to bill it as such, but unless you're willing to work inside your refrigerator, it's a good low-tech way to transfer some of that cold to your workspace. I bought something similar from ThinkGeek a couple years ago (it wasn't billed as cutting-edge technology there, of course), and it did help cut the heat a bit during the stretch when we lived in a basement apartment without air conditioning (my office routinely got to 85 degrees F, summer AND winter). It wasn't the arctic blast I would have liked, but it was colder than a regular fan of the same size.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Very recently. Notice the linksynergy links that must be used, or it won't work.
Read my blog: HansMast.com
The laws of thermodynamics prevent a car from ever running on JUST water. Nevertheless, a wide range of intelligent people seem to be falling for all the reports of this being done.
All the water powered tech I've seen has always required another expendable component (usually either electricity or a chemical reaction) to work. This part of the equation is NOT free.
Well.. the important question in breaking down the pricing is whether or not the fees are separable.
You can buy a car without paying for registration OR insurance. But you can't drive it on public roads. Further, those fees don't even go to Toyota. Their part of the transaction is done when then give you the car. So in that case, the holistic approach isn't warranted.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Internet-ready modems.
Jory
Well if you go to Wal-Mart, they have boxes for 45-50 dollars, in Florida anyway.
Using the coupon + buying 2 packs of gum = 10.49 for me.
I don't think this will be like the first great depression. People won't put up with mass moving to the camps or to government camp/work projects like they did before as the last dregs of their wealth gets confiscated and put into already wealthy people's hands. They did that once, a second time..not so sure it will fly this go around, we are more sophisticated now and more paranoid of motives and more able to get information. It's not just a small handful of newspaper owners and radio station owners they have to compromise, like they did last time to push propaganda.. They are already panicking (as well they should) over a paltry few million looming bankruptcies and houses being repoed, tens of millions in a borked economy with no way out and full complete despair facing people, living out on the street..not gonna happen. They've cooked the books on phony low-ball numbers inflation and phony unemployment stats as much as they can, they are running out of lies and excuses to cover for their sheer greed and arrogance ands stupidity. And the US was getting *very* close to mass internal revolt (against predatory capitalism mostly) by the time their bankers ww2 was run up the flagpole and used as a mass distraction. When you have the same big banks and the same multinationals and the same martini swilling cocktail partying at the yacht club people all involved in profiting from a war, it wasn't an accident, it was done on purpose.
We have way too many ways to get information out now, and people will be noticing who's fault is what. This last administration has just completely destroyed any sort of trust that the people have in government for telling the truth, the executive branch or congress, lowest approval ratings ever, lowest trust ratings ever, etc., they realize now it is all mostly an illusion to perpetuate the top 1% wealthy people at the expense of everyone else. I know there are still a lot of grassroots activists who cling to the outmoded belief that "this time" their pet big R or D candidate, "once they get in", will change things for the better, but those people come with a full belly of cult brand koolaid, they'll be the last ones to really see what is going on. Everyone else, who isn't a full time cult political party activist, is already starting to see it. and I guess..just a gues... you have to be around for a lot of election cycles to realize that past a pure intellectual level. You have to have lived it to see that D or R it doesn't make a bit oif difference, they are just two criminal political gangs in a jobs and skimming operation, they share the spils of owning government. No one who isn't in on and it and isn't a full member and adherent of that "system" ever makes it into the top ranks. Heck, I used to know before he died a *very* high ranking d party leader, I will not identify him, but he would get a little gassed on scotch and start laughing about it to me when we had informal talks/conversations, how much they sucker in the rubes to stay powerful. The term is "useful idiots" and it applies to both parties.
I think the government using their flag waving hessians along with their black suited economic spokesmodels murmuring soothing words will try a few more various schemes to both cork up dissent and also to try and "fix" the economy, but will not succeed, because not only have they screwed over their own people, they took a lot of powerful foreigners to the cleaners as well, and those folks are pissed off now and trying to slide away for support of the US and the fedbuck as much as possible in a loss-cutting way..
I worry the most about a rather involved and destructive false flag operation though, and I wouldn't put it past them for one second to not already have such plans sitting on the shelf, or to implement them when they deem it necessary.
Well, not a scam "per se" but they claim to work, and all I've tried do not. Like Xm radio (any newer one-not the old ones that actually work well) or my new TomTom 930 gps. I know the FCC has crippled these devices so it isn't the companies fault but the fact remains, they all claim they have wireless fm. They do, but only if you live 200 miles from a metropolis and put torroids on the power AND have a place to mount less than 4 feet from your antenna. They lead you to believe that you just plug it in, tune to a free station, and you have great hands free phone, xm, mp3, whatever. Not True.
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
Are there any book on the new digital TV technologies that people can suggest?
Rather than buying a costly extended warranty, I generally do some research for smaller shops that would be willing to do repairs on a "greater than 1 year old but less than 3 year old" laptop.
In my area, I've found that the small ones come and go, but at any given time, you can find at least ONE reputable computer tech. working out of his home or small business who sources parts from eBay, and does repairs inexpensively on Apple or other notebooks.
(EG. Yes, Apple will charge and arm and a leg for a logic board. But there's always somebody out there who just dropped their same model of laptop, smashed the screen, and decided they'd rather just sell it for parts value than get it repaired. Voila, there's the logic board you need for well under $100 in most cases!)
If the laptop in question is 3+ years old, it's almost a sure bet you're best off just replacing it when it breaks. (Faster, better stuff is out there by then.)
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The subject says it all.
We are the 198 proof..
Why would you want to pay for a warranty on a product which is free? If it breaks, you just get another one. In fact, why not go get twenty of these things at the outset Just In Case?