Yes. I have tried a Sky Now TV box to watch some channels, and I have found that the paid channel have the same amount of advertising of similar free to air terrestrial channels. With the pay TV channel I could watch a serial before, but the sad thing is the streaming quality is way less than watching terrestrial or satellite channels. Public broadcaster channels transmitted in HD have less advertising. They are license funded partially, it's true but the Sky subscription is higher. Not to mention the annoying hiccups due DRM/bandwidth/whatever the fact one has the same amount of advertising on a free to air channel or a pay tv channel doesn't make one prefer the pay tv option.
Still have a wood cookstove in my parent's house in the countryside. They are using the LPG central heating only in the early morning...
And you'll get a fantastic stew, besides...
I remember when you used to buy something in the US, and it didn't take you 15 fucking minutes to find the "English" version of the instructions.
I have tecentrly bought a lenovo Laptop PC an I was pleasently surprised that the keyboard was Italian, the plug of the power supply was 10A Italian and not "Schuko" or "BS 1363", this one not used in Italy, by the way, and finally a small "Guida dell'utente" aka user guide.
On the other hand, I remember the first Grundig colour TV with the manual only in German and also the labels on the TV set and remote were in German...
Lautstärke
Kontrast
Helligkeit
Farbe
Ein/Aus
Pretty sure I've been in a car with manual windows (and manual transmission, even!) in the last year.
In Europe most car are sold with manual. In Italy you are required to make the driving exam.
Anyway small cars like the Fiat 126 with an engine ripped from an underpowered motorbike have
to use a manual to have a decent torque. Actualy the first model of 126 and the older 500 and 600 have an unsyncronized manual gear. yuo had to do "Double clutching".
Anyway I have always had manuals, becaue I haved had small or compact cars, made by Fiat or Renault.
Busy signals? Pretty common when calling a business -- once there's a call on call waiting and one on the line, 3rd caller gets a busy.
Paper maps -- maybe road maps aren't as common, but any hiker typically gets a paper maps of a park, and maps of buildings like museums are often given out.
I have a VoIP landline with unlimited national calls on other landline phones so I use it snd if for some reason the router loses the internet connection if I try to use the wired phone I get a busy signal.
If i phome auntie on the landline I'll get a busy signal too.
By the way phone to an elderly relative instead of digging on Facebook or twitter is still better, and in half an hout you'll get a complete staus update on other relatives and friends...
I think because if one had to find creative ways to make love with his wife living in a flat and a child with a light sleep, has somewhat to find creative ways to do it. Besides someone could find that make a date again with her husband could be really really fun.
On the other hand the media hammering on sexual predators makes people immediately think to these situations. The TV does it because talking about a couple still in lov after having a couple of child is boring and doesn't sell advertising, when a crime attracts a lot of viewers...
Everyone has kids knows that the answer in how to have sex with kids is to call Grandma or a babysitter for the evening, to to a restaurant with your spouse and then go straight in a motel or if you feel fancy, search a quiet spot, park there and put newspapers on the car's windows.
In Italy there was in use an analogue method of relay, called ping-pong, where the signal from the broadcast studio or the main tower was sent in a regular VHF or UHF channel and used by the local TV set, to cover the valleys and hills the signal was received and frequency converted in another VHF or UHF channel. This method was used to relay the channel from Switzerland, France or Yugoslavia.
You could jam a signal with a CATV single-channel amplifier and a TV modulator, but the bigges problem on some sites was that sometimes weird propagation make te secondary transmitter to start broadcast other station or get a garbled signal.
What should be done for safety is to add a couple of pin on the chip, one that enables the BIOS flash an the one that enables the ME engine or not.
So a couple of jumpers on the motherboard could make the buyer to control the behaviour. IF this is difficult because is a laptop or an embedded ssytem they could be changed with soldered blobs or even using a keyboard controller that remember the configuration set with a particular key combo on power on in an eeprom. Problem solved.
I still have a couple of tape decks in working order.
One it's use to make cassette tapes to use with a Commodore 64. when i feel that I have to relax playing a small platform game of my youth makes me feel more relaxed than the las Xbox games, and you can find a lot of oldies in the.tap files.
I have also some old original cassettes and airchecks and a prosumer 3-head Teac deck that has a decent audio quality, and I use it als to record my piano practice and listen to me. The user interface is perfect. I know that there are some TASCAM secorders on SD card that are of good quality, but the tape deck simply works.
Unfortunately CD rewitable audio recorders are impossible to find and they had decent DAC and ADC and user interface.
You can use a PC, but i find the interface distracting.
Actually most of unsmart TV are using same processor and firmware of the smart models, and the smart function aren't enabled if during boot the firmware finds outs that Ethernet and wi fi are not present.
I have made an update make them solve a visualization problem on channel names: it's white without any mask or outline so on light images it's unreadable, for instance. They didn't fix it.
The problem is that an analogue TV set sold with the same brand (that was actually designed and built by the brand, compared to the new one that is only a rebranded chinese thing) with a mask ROM firmware had the problem solved, and the Font they used was the same of the teletext and was quite readable instead of the new antialiased font.
There's a reason becaus on Trinitron TV the OSD is green...
When I listen to Internet radio I have found that the radio that are better tasting to me are the ones that have a real radio transmitter and are either simulcasting what is pumpend in the antenna and their "speciality" channels.
The advertising level it's bearable, because they know that too much ads and too less music or spoken words makes people to tune out and I also suppose that overe the air ads are paid more.
I am in Europe, so we have a lot of public radios, and if you like classical music you have a really good choice, especially mecause some of these radio have also an orchestra to make recordings of live shows.
IT's easier to give back an item bought online, due the consumer protection law or how compaines are willing to help you, I remember in the '80 you could buy from a papaer catalog sending a paer letter some items, even a TV set and the company had a policy you could return anything without problem in the 15 days after delivery policy. On a brick and mortar shop it's norally more difficult.
If you see a physical object in a shop you could easily check if it's ok or it's broken and have a look on exact aspect an dimensions, so if you see that the item is too small or too big or the colour is ugly you haven't to rely on some photos and descriptions.
And of coures the bane of post order, the item is damaged in transit, very difficult to happen i a brick and mortar sho-p.
The first thing is that most of those social media are a covert way to fulfill you advertising.
Normally the reaction of too much advertising is for people to ditch it. Like some pay TV service with ads or when you are watching free to air channel and see twice the same ad in ten minutes you change channel, but to avoid this social media are applying all techinues to make you hooked and are using you and your friends accomplicdes on locking people in the advertising system. The applications are made also to hook you.
Mailing list, usenet don't have this the applications to read and write emails and news articles are also made to work in an offline and batch fashion, you could esily allot time to read and answer them and of course non advertising is presentand when is present is called spam.
If I carry a cellphone, guess what you couls send me and SMS or even if you need to talk to me urgently dial my number and make a phone call.
I have found that when I said this to my friends it actually worked. I turn off the phone at night and put in charge when I am home, because for true emegencies I have a VOIP landline withj an unlisted number and an hardware answering machine.
For the bank the backup method is to go physically to the bank with a copy of the denouncement of stolen, lost or mugged item.
It' inconvenient but try to breach it is difficult and exposes the person to liability and charges of perjury.
In Italy you have the "Fermo Posta" where packages are to be picked at the nearest Post Office, and is mandatory for C.O.D. over a certain amount of cash. normal price for the service id 3 €, but for amazon and possibly other book stores on-line is free.
There are also the "locker" that are automatic and placed in a lot of malls that are working like this.
Book store chains are also offering the service in their physical book stores, you order the books online and collect them in a bookstore.
This is because normally on a parcel proof of delivery is needed. For smaller parcel, if you have a mailbox with a wider slot PDF in Italian It costs about 100€, when a normal one costs 20€. I think that an automatic system will cost more than a mechanical systems that by the way doesn'tneed batteries or a power supply.
Fast food chain burger flipper -- replaced by a robot. There still will be employees at the stores, just a bunch less. Minimum wage laws have made their work too expensive.
You're thinking about fast food chains only, because I think that there's a market of better fast food and restaurants. Like because in every decent mall you could buy either prepackaged ham or cheese or ask to be served by a clerk and get fresly cut food. It costs a bit more, but it's of better quality without preservatives.
Also from what I see, more cafeteria-like shops are appearing and in the other end of spectrum you could find automatic vending machines givig sandwiches, awful-tasting sandwiches.
I think that the fast food chain premise is flawed because they are selling an inferior good coated with advertising to compensate. Giving coffe in a paper cup is cost saving but makes easy for a small bar to make a better coffee, and a bun filled with preservatives and added sugars will taste bad compared with a slice of real freshly baked bread.
Given the obesity problem, I think it' bettet to eat less (calories) but better (quality). And at the bottom of the line, you're going to spend less.
Interestingly, at least in my neck of the woods, those small shops are doing pretty well. It's the larger retailers that are closing. It seems to me they brought it on themselves.
Fist of all small shops that are having problematic owners tend to go out of business quicker than large retail chains, even simply because a small shop down town can be sold and rented more easily than a mall in the middle of nowhere at the motorway exit. So the better managed could survive easily.
There are also smaller shops that are in a chain I think for instance Carrefour or Auchan/Simply and from what I could see the smaller shops compensates their higher costs with the easiness of access: if I need only a fluorescent tube or some candles, I don't drive to the big hardware mall or Ikea, I'll go in the smaller hardware store or Carrefour. Besides smaller grocery stores tend to have a much faster turnaround on vegetables and fresh foods.
Depends of the furniture. There is a service already of transport and assembly, that especially for kitchens is useful. This is the one for UK This is the one for France This is for Italy
Installing a kitchen is difficult, you have to be at least in three and have some woodworking tooks available if you have to fit and adjust some things, as always happen.
Not to mention the safety hazard problems you have to install a gas or electric stove if you don't have the right tools to check that the pipes are gas tight and the ground connection is working, and if a wiriing or a gas pipe has to be added doing a good work need expertise.
Putting toegher a bed or a bookshelf is of course easier, but sometimes require to be in tw to work...
Still not convinced. I don't need some employees opinion when I can have reviews from a multitude of sites literally at my fingertips.
If the clerk is a competent one it will help selling you the right thing and giving you post selling services. For instance, if you are buying a puskbike having a bike right for your body sized and tuned to yours is a good thing that an on-line retailer can't do.
The problem stems with large chins that have based their success on low prices and as side effect having few untrained clerks unavailable for any explanation or having learnt only what is on the site.
What I have noticed regular full-time employees are way more competent compared with franchisers or temps. Sky had the option to buy a yearly prepaid smart card for the subscription, you pay it you put in the receiver and for 1 year you can watch pay TV, ended the year you give back the old one and get a new one. No credit card required. The option was tucked somewhere in the web site but if you asked to random guy in the mall they weren't aware.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. I have tried a Sky Now TV box to watch some channels, and I have found that the paid channel have the same amount of advertising of similar free to air terrestrial channels. With the pay TV channel I could watch a serial before, but the sad thing is the streaming quality is way less than watching terrestrial or satellite channels. Public broadcaster channels transmitted in HD have less advertising. They are license funded partially, it's true but the Sky subscription is higher. Not to mention the annoying hiccups due DRM/bandwidth/whatever the fact one has the same amount of advertising on a free to air channel or a pay tv channel doesn't make one prefer the pay tv option.
KREMVAX was an april'f ool joke but in Soviet Union there was an UUCP-like networking system.
Still have a wood cookstove in my parent's house in the countryside. They are using the LPG central heating only in the early morning...
And you'll get a fantastic stew, besides...
I remember when you used to buy something in the US, and it didn't take you 15 fucking minutes to find the "English" version of the instructions.
I have tecentrly bought a lenovo Laptop PC an I was pleasently surprised that the keyboard was Italian, the plug of the power supply was 10A Italian and not "Schuko" or "BS 1363", this one not used in Italy, by the way, and finally a small "Guida dell'utente" aka user guide.
On the other hand, I remember the first Grundig colour TV with the manual only in German and also the labels on the TV set and remote were in German...
Lautstärke
Kontrast
Helligkeit
Farbe
Ein/Aus
Pretty sure I've been in a car with manual windows (and manual transmission, even!) in the last year.
In Europe most car are sold with manual. In Italy you are required to make the driving exam.
Anyway small cars like the Fiat 126 with an engine ripped from an underpowered motorbike have to use a manual to have a decent torque. Actualy the first model of 126 and the older 500 and 600 have an unsyncronized manual gear. yuo had to do "Double clutching". Anyway I have always had manuals, becaue I haved had small or compact cars, made by Fiat or Renault.
Busy signals? Pretty common when calling a business -- once there's a call on call waiting and one on the line, 3rd caller gets a busy.
Paper maps -- maybe road maps aren't as common, but any hiker typically gets a paper maps of a park, and maps of buildings like museums are often given out.
I have a VoIP landline with unlimited national calls on other landline phones so I use it snd if for some reason the router loses the internet connection if I try to use the wired phone I get a busy signal.
If i phome auntie on the landline I'll get a busy signal too.
By the way phone to an elderly relative instead of digging on Facebook or twitter is still better, and in half an hout you'll get a complete staus update on other relatives and friends...
I think because if one had to find creative ways to make love with his wife living in a flat and a child with a light sleep, has somewhat to find creative ways to do it. Besides someone could find that make a date again with her husband could be really really fun.
On the other hand the media hammering on sexual predators makes people immediately think to these situations. The TV does it because talking about a couple still in lov after having a couple of child is boring and doesn't sell advertising, when a crime attracts a lot of viewers...
Everyone has kids knows that the answer in how to have sex with kids is to call Grandma or a babysitter for the evening, to to a restaurant with your spouse and then go straight in a motel or if you feel fancy, search a quiet spot, park there and put newspapers on the car's windows.
In Italy there was in use an analogue method of relay, called ping-pong, where the signal from the broadcast studio or the main tower was sent in a regular VHF or UHF channel and used by the local TV set, to cover the valleys and hills the signal was received and frequency converted in another VHF or UHF channel. This method was used to relay the channel from Switzerland, France or Yugoslavia.
You could jam a signal with a CATV single-channel amplifier and a TV modulator, but the bigges problem on some sites was that sometimes weird propagation make te secondary transmitter to start broadcast other station or get a garbled signal.
What should be done for safety is to add a couple of pin on the chip, one that enables the BIOS flash an the one that enables the ME engine or not. So a couple of jumpers on the motherboard could make the buyer to control the behaviour. IF this is difficult because is a laptop or an embedded ssytem they could be changed with soldered blobs or even using a keyboard controller that remember the configuration set with a particular key combo on power on in an eeprom. Problem solved.
CONSIP in Italy should be the equivalent system for Italiy.
The problem is that is a yummy target for bribing
Everyone knows that soft fresh cheese has fewer calories than aged hard cheese. Even Mascarpone is more energetic.
I still have a couple of tape decks in working order. .tap files.
One it's use to make cassette tapes to use with a Commodore 64. when i feel that I have to relax playing a small platform game of my youth makes me feel more relaxed than the las Xbox games, and you can find a lot of oldies in the
I have also some old original cassettes and airchecks and a prosumer 3-head Teac deck that has a decent audio quality, and I use it als to record my piano practice and listen to me. The user interface is perfect. I know that there are some TASCAM secorders on SD card that are of good quality, but the tape deck simply works.
Unfortunately CD rewitable audio recorders are impossible to find and they had decent DAC and ADC and user interface.
You can use a PC, but i find the interface distracting.
Actually most of unsmart TV are using same processor and firmware of the smart models, and the smart function aren't enabled if during boot the firmware finds outs that Ethernet and wi fi are not present.
I have made an update make them solve a visualization problem on channel names: it's white without any mask or outline so on light images it's unreadable, for instance. They didn't fix it. The problem is that an analogue TV set sold with the same brand (that was actually designed and built by the brand, compared to the new one that is only a rebranded chinese thing) with a mask ROM firmware had the problem solved, and the Font they used was the same of the teletext and was quite readable instead of the new antialiased font. There's a reason becaus on Trinitron TV the OSD is green...
When I listen to Internet radio I have found that the radio that are better tasting to me are the ones that have a real radio transmitter and are either simulcasting what is pumpend in the antenna and their "speciality" channels. The advertising level it's bearable, because they know that too much ads and too less music or spoken words makes people to tune out and I also suppose that overe the air ads are paid more. I am in Europe, so we have a lot of public radios, and if you like classical music you have a really good choice, especially mecause some of these radio have also an orchestra to make recordings of live shows.
IT's easier to give back an item bought online, due the consumer protection law or how compaines are willing to help you, I remember in the '80 you could buy from a papaer catalog sending a paer letter some items, even a TV set and the company had a policy you could return anything without problem in the 15 days after delivery policy.
On a brick and mortar shop it's norally more difficult.
If you see a physical object in a shop you could easily check if it's ok or it's broken and have a look on exact aspect an dimensions, so if you see that the item is too small or too big or the colour is ugly you haven't to rely on some photos and descriptions.
And of coures the bane of post order, the item is damaged in transit, very difficult to happen i a brick and mortar sho-p.
The first thing is that most of those social media are a covert way to fulfill you advertising. Normally the reaction of too much advertising is for people to ditch it. Like some pay TV service with ads or when you are watching free to air channel and see twice the same ad in ten minutes you change channel, but to avoid this social media are applying all techinues to make you hooked and are using you and your friends accomplicdes on locking people in the advertising system. The applications are made also to hook you. Mailing list, usenet don't have this the applications to read and write emails and news articles are also made to work in an offline and batch fashion, you could esily allot time to read and answer them and of course non advertising is presentand when is present is called spam. If I carry a cellphone, guess what you couls send me and SMS or even if you need to talk to me urgently dial my number and make a phone call. I have found that when I said this to my friends it actually worked. I turn off the phone at night and put in charge when I am home, because for true emegencies I have a VOIP landline withj an unlisted number and an hardware answering machine.
For the bank the backup method is to go physically to the bank with a copy of the denouncement of stolen, lost or mugged item. It' inconvenient but try to breach it is difficult and exposes the person to liability and charges of perjury.
In Italy you have the "Fermo Posta" where packages are to be picked at the nearest Post Office, and is mandatory for C.O.D. over a certain amount of cash. normal price for the service id 3 €, but for amazon and possibly other book stores on-line is free.
There are also the "locker" that are automatic and placed in a lot of malls that are working like this.
Book store chains are also offering the service in their physical book stores, you order the books online and collect them in a bookstore.
This is because normally on a parcel proof of delivery is needed. For smaller parcel, if you have a mailbox with a wider slot PDF in Italian It costs about 100€, when a normal one costs 20€. I think that an automatic system will cost more than a mechanical systems that by the way doesn'tneed batteries or a power supply.
Fast food chain burger flipper -- replaced by a robot. There still will be employees at the stores, just a bunch less. Minimum wage laws have made their work too expensive.
You're thinking about fast food chains only, because I think that there's a market of better fast food and restaurants. Like because in every decent mall you could buy either prepackaged ham or cheese or ask to be served by a clerk and get fresly cut food. It costs a bit more, but it's of better quality without preservatives.
Also from what I see, more cafeteria-like shops are appearing and in the other end of spectrum you could find automatic vending machines givig sandwiches, awful-tasting sandwiches.
I think that the fast food chain premise is flawed because they are selling an inferior good coated with advertising to compensate. Giving coffe in a paper cup is cost saving but makes easy for a small bar to make a better coffee, and a bun filled with preservatives and added sugars will taste bad compared with a slice of real freshly baked bread.
Given the obesity problem, I think it' bettet to eat less (calories) but better (quality). And at the bottom of the line, you're going to spend less.
A Chevrolet Corvair, Citroen 2CV, a Fiat 130 Coupé or a VW T1, I suppose.
Interestingly, at least in my neck of the woods, those small shops are doing pretty well. It's the larger retailers that are closing. It seems to me they brought it on themselves.
Fist of all small shops that are having problematic owners tend to go out of business quicker than large retail chains, even simply because a small shop down town can be sold and rented more easily than a mall in the middle of nowhere at the motorway exit. So the better managed could survive easily.
There are also smaller shops that are in a chain I think for instance Carrefour or Auchan/Simply and from what I could see the smaller shops compensates their higher costs with the easiness of access: if I need only a fluorescent tube or some candles, I don't drive to the big hardware mall or Ikea, I'll go in the smaller hardware store or Carrefour. Besides smaller grocery stores tend to have a much faster turnaround on vegetables and fresh foods.
Depends of the furniture. There is a service already of transport and assembly, that especially for kitchens is useful.
This is the one for UK
This is the one for France
This is for Italy
Installing a kitchen is difficult, you have to be at least in three and have some woodworking tooks available if you have to fit and adjust some things, as always happen.
Not to mention the safety hazard problems you have to install a gas or electric stove if you don't have the right tools to check that the pipes are gas tight and the ground connection is working, and if a wiriing or a gas pipe has to be added doing a good work need expertise.
Putting toegher a bed or a bookshelf is of course easier, but sometimes require to be in tw to work...
Still not convinced. I don't need some employees opinion when I can have reviews from a multitude of sites literally at my fingertips.
If the clerk is a competent one it will help selling you the right thing and giving you post selling services. For instance, if you are buying a puskbike having a bike right for your body sized and tuned to yours is a good thing that an on-line retailer can't do.
The problem stems with large chins that have based their success on low prices and as side effect having few untrained clerks unavailable for any explanation or having learnt only what is on the site.
What I have noticed regular full-time employees are way more competent compared with franchisers or temps. Sky had the option to buy a yearly prepaid smart card for the subscription, you pay it you put in the receiver and for 1 year you can watch pay TV, ended the year you give back the old one and get a new one. No credit card required. The option was tucked somewhere in the web site but if you asked to random guy in the mall they weren't aware.
Sinclair QL computer? As fat I could remember there was a TCP/IP stack using the serial prort for SLIP or PPP and a couple of email/newsgroup clients.