Maybe they're front/back/basement keys, in which case you probably need only one unless you're living there
Why do you need those keys on your keyring even if it's your house?
Seriously, are people commonly arriving at their house and heading straight for the basement? Or the back door?
Just making numbers up, I'd wager that 99% of the people in this country arrive at their house and 99% of the time enter the same door. it might be the garage door, or the back door, or the front door, but it's always the same one....it's the direction their car or mass transit or just the street is in.
The fraction who arrive at multiple doors is microscopic, and only a tiny percentage of them have different keys.
Seriously, has anyone here ever lived in any place where they would, over 5% of the time, arrive at different entrances to their house? Yes, yes, unloading groceries or whatever, but have any of these been in houses where it would be a big hassle to walk around to the normal door to unlock it?
I have two of those thumb push key-things. You now, where one cylinder goes inside another, and you push the end in and it falls apart? They're a lot easier to use than carabiners, you can detach them one handed. (Erm, except half your keys fall on the floor if you do that.)
I'd recommend using them over carabiners, but for some reason they seem almost impossible to actually find and buy.
I don't use them for different sets of keys, though, I just grab another keyring from my car if I need it. I use them to detach my ignition key to leave my car running, and to detach my leatherman.
Keyrings should not be attached to backpacks, belt loops, or anything else that results in them being exposed or visible.
Yeah, this is one of the more stupid things I see.
The only people who need keys attached to their belt are people who carry about 50 keys, and the only people who do that are janitors or security people. Fair enough. That's like normal people can carry a screwdriver in their pocket, but people who carry a bunch of them for a living have toolbelts.
All other males: You are an idiot. You're a poseur.
(Women have a problem here, in that they are being sold clothing without pockets, or at least usable pockets. So must use purses, but still shouldn't mount keys on the outside.)
Likewise, I don't grasp this entire key thing. Do people just randomly end up at locations they have keys to and need to get into without their car or any planning?
I mean, maybe, sometimes, in a city with mass transit, perhaps. You ride to work, you get a call at work telling you your mother had to leave town immediately and she needs you to feed her cat, but you don't have her key on your keyring. Okay, whatever. (This is a circumstance where I can see someone carrying a backpack everywhere and having them in it. In it.)
But 80% of the American population, and everyone I know in real life (And hence see wearing keys on their belt.), operates out of their car as a base of operations. So you put those keys in your car. It's very rare that you end up somewhere not on your main keyring, without your car, without you planning that in advance, and hence getting any keys you need.
I used to do the same thing with my laptop. I had it locked to my laptop bag, and I'd just make sure the bag was hooked around something, usually my leg or the chair leg. I could leave it locked like that even when I put it back in the bag.
Much easier than locking and unlocking it.
Someone should make a retractable cord that attaches to the laptop lock hole that you just pull out and loop around something, maybe with a hook on the end so you can hook it back to itself. Gives you 'grab' protection, without any hassle at all. (Hell, you could almost do that with existing locks, except that you can't have the 'loop' open and have them stay attached to the laptop.)
Doesn't protect against someone taking them when they're unattended, but who the heck does that even with a lock?
I can't really say I understand how some people manage to constantly misplace bags, I've had several girlfriends who would put their bag/purse down the moment they went indoors or sat down and then they'd be surprised that they'd miss 2/3 of all their incoming calls
I find the 'instantly losing keys/whatever' to be to be sorta stupid, too.
Yes, yes, no one means to set them down in the wrong place, they do that automatically when they have them in their hand. So, um STOP CARRYING THEM IN YOUR HAND. Sheesh.
Things leave your pockets to get used, then put back, then get placed in the correct place. Until then, they stay in your pocket, especially if they can't help 'escaping'. This is not rocket surgery.
This is, of course, assuming that there is a 'correct place'. I'm even more baffled by people who lose their keys and don't seem to know where they are 'supposed' to be. I mean, in the strictest sense, are they even 'lost' at that point? For all anyone knows, they're exactly where they belong.
However, I have to put in a word for women and their cell phones. The reason they aren't answering their cell phone is that the cellphone is in the purse, correct. Likewise, often they let them go dead, and simply forget to manage them at all.
I used to complain this was stupid, and ask why they didn't carry them in their pocket. Just because they have a pocket book doesn't mean they need to keep their cellphone in it. Nor their keys, for that matter. I once saw a 'safety' thing telling women to get their keys out of their purse before going to their car in big dark parking lots, and had wonder why they'd be in there anyway.
What I didn't, and what most men don't, realize is women are, for some entirely inane reason, being sold clothing without actual usable pockets. Many women don't even realize this is happening. Sure, they know some of their clothing doesn't have pockets in it, but they don't realize the existing pockets on their pants are microscopic compared to men.
Aside to women: Right now, I can fit two paperback books in a single pants' pocket. (Pant's pocket? Is one side of 'pants' a 'pant'?) I can also fit a soft drink can in them. Easily. These are fairly normal shorts...I've had blue jeans where I could only get one book in a front pocket. I'm not the thinnest guy in the world, I think these are 34s, but I assure that all men's pants' pockets are this big.
You, OTOH, appear to have pants where you'd be lucky to fit a small deodorant in them. Or, as the case here is, a cell phone. The opening is roughly the same size, but it seems to go maybe three inches and is straight down. It's much much bigger for men. (There's some weird dirty joke there, but I can't figure it out.)
Whatever they are selling you, pitch a fit over such stupid sexism. Women have the equal right to as big a pocket as men do. And there's nothing stopping there from being pockets on most skirts and dresses, either. Sure, some incredibly formal or some incredibly sexy clothing probably wouldn't want them, but everything else should have them.
Oh, but you're stupid weak women, who don't need such things, you carry around huge purses everywhere and certainly don't need the ability to keep in touch using cellphones. I can't believe you gals put up with such sexism, and I'm just forced to conclude you honestly don't know how you're being shortchanged in the pockets department. Seriously, find a male friend, and borrow some shorts, and put them on (It's okay if they're too big.) and stick your hands in your pockets.
Heh, I never lose my keys either, but used to just throw them anywhere in my pocket. Since getting an iPhone, though, I'm trying to train myself that phone goes in left pocket, keys in right.
I've occasionally run across people who seem to think hidden keys are insecure.
Keys hidden under the welcome mat or on your sun visor are insecure.
But anywhere else, somewhere that takes more than thirty seconds to find, they've already broken a window or used a slim jim to get in and hotwired the car.
Everyone knows security is only as strong as its weakest link. But, people don't realize, conversely, any added weakness in security that is harder to exploit than the weaknesses that everything has is not a weakness at all. Because criminals will just do the thing that is a) faster, and b) they know works.
Why are you carrying around a key to the front and a key to the back? Do you often need to go in two doors at once?
Seriously, I've lived in places with unmatched keys, and, um, I carry enough keys to open one door. The one closest to where I always arrive at the house. I use these keys to get in. Which is, I believe, the entire point of carrying keys.
I suppose there could be some configuration of a place where you often arrive from different directions, in a city or something, but it can't be that common even there.
And, hell, if that happens, you can use two keyrings. (Considering that you're probably walking to your car in one direction, and not to your car in the others, that makes sense anyway.)
I mentioned this in another thread, but here's the best analogy:
A subdivision starts selling houses where, in the housing covenant, they demand you purchase all food at your house from them. You can't even get it for free and bring it in. (You could eat it somewhere else, though. This only applies to your house.)
They have some magical arch that keeps food from coming in at the entrance, and it works. Some people manage to break a hole in the fence and bring food in, but they keep cracking down on that. They even assert it's illegal, although they've never done anything with that claim.
This is, in essence, what Apple has done. But, don't worry, it's to protect us from spoiled food.
This bitching about Flash is like bitching that the subdivision store doesn't sell Pepsi. That might be an issue for dumb people, but isn't really the actual issue when you think about it.
In a world where courts and legislatures actually understood electronic devices, this would be stamped out as rapidly if someone tried the subdivision trick.
Re:It's because Apple can't let go... and design..
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Flash Is Not a Right
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I don't know what you're talking about with the ITouch.
I have an iPhone, and hooking it up to any computer exposes the pictures...and only the pictures. You can't get to the MP3s or anything, but you can get to the pictures.
I mean, that's just bad as what you said, but the pictures are essentially the one thing you can get off Apple devices via the standard USB flash-drive interface.
That is an incredibly stupid analogy. The problem isn't what Apple sells. It's one thing for Apple to choose not to sell the apps. But that store is the only place you can get anything on the device at all. Paying or for free. A device you own.
It's more akin to subdivision requiring all people who live there to use only the subdivision's grocery store, via a housing covenant, and they can purchase no other food elsewhere. Hell, they can't even get free food elsewhere.
And you can't buy Pepsi products there, and everyone is bitching about that because everyone like Flash, er, Pepsi, but that's not the real problem with that absurd arrangement, now is it?
You'll also note that, just like Apple's arrangement with their App Store, such a thing is probably legal.
However, because courts and lawmakers understand physical freedom, such a thing would almost certainly not be legal for long if places actually started doing it. (And, for all I know, it's already happened and been banned. Possibly back when 'company stores' operated in 'company towns'.)
But that's the real world. Courts and lawmakers don't seem to grasp that magical electronic world, where apparently everyone can demand you do whatever they say, under any circumstances, as long as you're using something that, at some point, belonged to them. They can make whatever outrageous demands they want, have whatever absurd restrictions they want, and it's all okay, because, apparently, the word 'electronic' is in there somewhere. In fact, they've even managed, in some cases, to make breaking such restrictions criminal.
Newsflash for people who've been drinking the corporatism kool-aid: Sellers do not have the right to impose whatever terms they want on purchasers. Nor do they have the right to sell products in whatever form they want.
Many people have essentially made TVs they can install software on. They're called HTPCs. They're PCs hooked to TVs. So the market clearly exists
Granted, that's not the actual TV, but TVs probably have incredibly shitty general-purpose processors anyway, no input except a remote, almost no memory, and I'm not entirely sure what you'd have them do, anyway. I suspect they don't even have general graphics output...that's probably some video chip that can only print certain things in certain places, it's not like you can display images. And, of course, they have no network connection or storage space anyway.
I'm not sure anyone thinks rewriting a 64k firmware to build an OS that can print text and volume sliders on the screen in response to remote control presses would be a good use of their time. Not when you can just hook a PC to it and be done with it.
And that goes double for microwaves, which are even crappier and have almost no output. Hell, they're only general purpose CPUs because those are cheaper at this point than writing a custom processor. What are you going to do, reprogram your $80 microwave as a $1 calculator?
The reason that no one cares about 'fully closed systems with no access for you to install software' is that those things can't be used to do anything even slightly useful with, and no software exists for them, and no one can even conceive of useful software for them, because they are of such limited functionality and connectivity.
I'm sure you think you're clever and all thinking that the issue is what is technically a 'computer', and pointing out they're everywhere, but no one actually said anything about general purpose CPUs or 'computers'. They have a problem with devices they'd want to install software on that they can't, as was clearly said. There's no one standing around with a piece of software they want to install on a microwave or TV. (Although, as I said, there probably is a market for TVs with enough processing and storage that you can install software on them.)
The video and game rental industry companies need to build a better mailpiece to protect their content.
No, what actually needs to happen is that the Post Office needs to recognize that people mail DVDs, and to actually meet the demand and construct a cheap-as-possible box that, never-the-less, will get through mailing intact.
Or even have a cheap one with a slight chance of breakage, and a more expensive one with almost no chance.
And then sell them, with and without postage, which should be a set standard rate for said box with a CD/DVD in it.
I work for a company that mails DVDs out occassionally, and, let me tell you, it's a hassle. We're having to use photo mailers. The post office doesn't even sell CD mailers except for CDs in jewel cases. (Who the hell ships CDs in jewel cases?)
Now, Netflix and whoever might want to make their own mailers, for cheaper or whatever.
But what about normal people who just want to send a DVD across the country? The post office doesn't provide mailers. It's nearly impossible to find any DVD non-jewel case mailer, in fact. And once you get one, you have to actually take it in and have it weighed, because it's certainly not a standard size.
Don't whine and bitch that people should 'pay the extra postage'. Give them a damn box they can buy to ship a DVD in that actually is some standard size with standard postage, sold with whatever postage is needed to cover the cost. You've got two of those for photos, why not one for DVDs?
I'm not entirely certain Netflix gets a special deal at all, because the DVD publishers aren't really fans of DVD rental at all. In fact, there have been efforts to ban such a thing, at least back in the VHS days.
However, they certainly aren't paying 'retail'. I'm sure they can get the DVD wholesale, or close to it. I mean, if you're wanting to buy 5,000 copies of a DVD, the place selling to you doesn't care if you're Best Buy and want to resell them or Netflix and want to rent them or some random Joe who wants to build a house out of them...you're paying less than store price if you show up with an order that big, especially if you do it over and over again with different DVDs.
That said, at times, Blockbuster has paid more than 'retail'. Not because they're idiots, but because, sometimes, movies come out of 'high prices DVD' for a three months or so before the price is dropped, specifically so that video rental stores can show up, pay outrageous prices, and advertise that they have Hit Hollywood Movie #2947 available while people still can't buy it in stores. At least, not the local Walmart. People could technically buy it if they tracked down a wholesaler, although they'd pay out the nose and probably have to order at least a 10 copies. (I don't know if this 'early release' still happens...hell, I have no idea what happens at video rental places anymore.)
In other words, the only history of cooperation that movie studios have with movie rental places, once they were forced to admit that they were legal, was setting up a system where sometimes they pay more than retail. They consider DVD rentals to be cannibalizing their profits. (This is why they invented DivX, the self-destructing DVD, which was them trying to get in the rental business themselves.)
It's extremely unlikely they're specifically giving Netflix any discount on DVDs. I can see them possibly setting up a system where they make Netflix-only DVDs, without packaging and stuff, and sell them for slightly cheaper, if that makes them a little more money. (I.e., if the packaging is $1.50, they might make it without the packaging and sell it for a $1 less.) But that's about all I can see them doing.
Since USPS seems to be giving special handling to the Netflix disks, apparently due to the employees' reluctance to perform processing that results in damage to the goods, and the costs of withdrawing the pieces and handling them separately is almost certainly not included in the USPS pricing for handling them, it seems that the outcome will likely not be to extend this special handling to more mailers, but to standardize the handling of all mail containing disks, with, most likely, a higher price for doing so.
See, this is what is called 'begging the question'. (People who misuse that expression, take note.)
I see no evidence at all that USPS does such a thing, nor can I comprehend why they would do so.
In fact, USPS has no reason at all to treat Netflix DVDs well, especially compared to other companies.
Companies that have options of shipping, like USPS vs. UPS vs. FedEx, will move elsewhere if packages get damaged in shipping. Netflix, however, has such high volume that moving elsewhere would kill it. Or, rather, a high ship volume to sales volume ratio, if you see what I'm saying.
So USPS really can treat them like crap, whereas it couldn't do that to, for example, Barnes & Noble if they used USPS to ship. Because Barnes & Noble can move elsewhere (And, indeed, is elsewhere.), whereas Netflix can't actually afford to ship packages back and forth using UPS. (Especially not back! Home pickup costs alone would kill them.)
So, like I said, I can't comprehend why USPS would be treating Netflix nicely.
He's complaining about the DVDs he's dropping off getting damaged by the mail worker.
No he's not, you illiterate fuck.
...my mail man used to break an awful lot of DVDs trying to shove them in my mailbox...
Mailmen do not shove mail they are picking up into a mailbox. Um, duh.
He's complaining about the DVD's he's receiving getting damaged by the mail worker before he receives them.
And there are plenty of other clues about that in his comment, if you aren't an illiterate fuck.
For example, he reduced his total amount from 1 to 4, which only makes sense in reducing the amount sent to him at once. If the amount going out was a problem, he could just send back one at a time even if he had 4 at a time, with only a slight reduction in turnover speed. So if the problem was sending, duh, he would just send one every day.
But, of course, he's actually have a problem with receiving, which, because of the vagaries of the mail system, means he couldn't safely have sent two back at one, or he might get the next two at the same time. So at all times, he'd have to have three in his possession, and as the entire point of having that many out is to keep half of them 'in the air' so you get new videos every day, he cut back. (Why he switched to 'one out' instead of 'two out', which would be just as safe if he's always holding one, I don't know. That would seem a better choice. Perhaps there is not a 'two out'.)
Likewise, another clue he's talking about receiving is that he talks about the DVDs being unplayable. Hey, illiterate fuck, why the hell would he know how 'playable' a DVD was when received back by Netflix? Are they calling him up, saying 'One of these DVDs has broken and another has warped so badly that it became completely unplayable'? Even if they were charging people for broke-in-shipping DVDs, which I doubt, but even if they were, they'd hardly inform him specifically in what manner the CDs were broken.
A drop box is a public or semi-public send-only mailbox that anyone can put stuff in.
It has nothing to do with how you get your mail, you idjit. You can use a drop box and have a PO box, you can use one and have a normal mailbox (I do this, especially with sending checks, if I'm going to town anyway. A dropbox at a mall is much safer than leaving it in your mailbox with a flag up.), you can use one and collect at general delivery, you can use one without any ability to be mailed back at all. (I wonder what you put on the return address if so?)
Now, if you have a PO box, you don't have a private sending box, so you essentially either have to use a public dropbox (Probably the one right at the post office.), or hand it in to a person at the post office, or catch a mailman walking by.
But the fact that people with PO boxes tend to use dropboxes doesn't mean they are, in the slightest way, related, and dropboxes certainly aren't a form of PO box.
The USPS is a non-profit company because that is the way they are defined to be under the law that created them.
Actual entities created by random people have one of several specific statuses under the law, from publicly traded company to non-profit and everything in between.
The post office, however, is specifically created under a specific law, and thus has its own unique status.
This status is, FYI, actually more limited than a non-profit. The post office is only allowed to make or lose a certain percentage, unlike a non-profit, which can actually make a lot of money. (They just keeps the money to spend later, instead of paying out a profit.)
Indeed there's a suggestion (though unclear) that IE9 may support whatever codecs are installed with WMP:
I would actually be amazed if this didn't happen. That can't help but be in Microsoft's best interests.
Likewise, I would be amazed if web browsers, IE9 included, didn't do 'codec lookups' when faced with something they don't understand.
But like you said, a standardize container is much better than what we have now, where everyone is essentially downloading a Flash program to play video, which is just crazy.
As I mentioned above, anime's been doing this sort of thing for a while. As have video games, aka, Planescape: Torment.
But there's a very large difference between an imported TV show that maybe a hundred thousand Americans see vs. a show with ratings of 12 million. The later demonstrates that this sort of thing can be popular outside of small genres with dedicated fans.
Lost is the 'format definer' for a new generation of shows.
Not the inventor, possibly not the best already, and certainly not the best forever, but it's going to be to this format like 'Star Trek' was to 'space opera'. I don't know what the format will be called...'revelation shows'?
It is, in a sense, an ontological mystery, 'how did we get here?' but a generalized one rather than the more specific 'locked in a room' one. 'How did we get to this point in our lives that this is happening to us?'
At times, Lost played with the idea that perhaps it was a straight ontological mystery, perhaps they were in another universe or something, but in the end it turns out they did know how they got to the island...they crashed there. The island may be something else too, but it is also an actual place you can arrive at and leave, and they did actually arrive there via their actual plane crashing into it, and some of them really did leave there via helicopter/boat.
That aside, there's nothing particularly innovative in Lost's storytelling. People's tastes in art are so conservative that people forget that most of these "new" ideas date back decades if not longer. You can look back to the 1960s and the work of Ballard to find novels told in a form far more experimental than any television series has absorbed.
Some experimental novels does not equal a TV show watched by 12 million people. Of course a massively popular TV show didn't invent what it was doing. That doesn't change the fact that a rating topper is doing it, which changes everything.
There's a valid objection to calling it 'hypertext', which is just a stupid name. But television has gotten amazingly complex over the last decade or two, especially since producers can start assuming that you've watched every episode of the show, in order.
Seriously, compare the plot of a random House episode with the plot of a random 1980 medical drama. They have to have all sorts of added twists and whatnot.
Hell, compare an episode of I Love Lucy to an average sitcom. Even the modern dumbest sitcom has to provide two plotlines.
With Lost, it was demonstrated that audience will follow convoluted tons of characters and time-travel plots and out-of-order flashbacks and slow multi-season reveals. Even if the audience itself doesn't think this, and has to be tricked into watching at the start.
This is well past, like three times as much, what even the most complicated TV mainstream show did before it. (Yes, yes, I'm sure someone's going to point to some obscure anime that maybe 200,000 people have ever seen. That's not really the same thing.) It's raised the bar of what the television networks think the audience will put up with.
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Maybe they're front/back/basement keys, in which case you probably need only one unless you're living there
Why do you need those keys on your keyring even if it's your house?
Seriously, are people commonly arriving at their house and heading straight for the basement? Or the back door?
Just making numbers up, I'd wager that 99% of the people in this country arrive at their house and 99% of the time enter the same door. it might be the garage door, or the back door, or the front door, but it's always the same one....it's the direction their car or mass transit or just the street is in.
The fraction who arrive at multiple doors is microscopic, and only a tiny percentage of them have different keys.
Seriously, has anyone here ever lived in any place where they would, over 5% of the time, arrive at different entrances to their house? Yes, yes, unloading groceries or whatever, but have any of these been in houses where it would be a big hassle to walk around to the normal door to unlock it?
I have two of those thumb push key-things. You now, where one cylinder goes inside another, and you push the end in and it falls apart? They're a lot easier to use than carabiners, you can detach them one handed. (Erm, except half your keys fall on the floor if you do that.)
I'd recommend using them over carabiners, but for some reason they seem almost impossible to actually find and buy.
I don't use them for different sets of keys, though, I just grab another keyring from my car if I need it. I use them to detach my ignition key to leave my car running, and to detach my leatherman.
Keyrings should not be attached to backpacks, belt loops, or anything else that results in them being exposed or visible.
Yeah, this is one of the more stupid things I see.
The only people who need keys attached to their belt are people who carry about 50 keys, and the only people who do that are janitors or security people. Fair enough. That's like normal people can carry a screwdriver in their pocket, but people who carry a bunch of them for a living have toolbelts.
All other males: You are an idiot. You're a poseur.
(Women have a problem here, in that they are being sold clothing without pockets, or at least usable pockets. So must use purses, but still shouldn't mount keys on the outside.)
Likewise, I don't grasp this entire key thing. Do people just randomly end up at locations they have keys to and need to get into without their car or any planning?
I mean, maybe, sometimes, in a city with mass transit, perhaps. You ride to work, you get a call at work telling you your mother had to leave town immediately and she needs you to feed her cat, but you don't have her key on your keyring. Okay, whatever. (This is a circumstance where I can see someone carrying a backpack everywhere and having them in it. In it.)
But 80% of the American population, and everyone I know in real life (And hence see wearing keys on their belt.), operates out of their car as a base of operations. So you put those keys in your car. It's very rare that you end up somewhere not on your main keyring, without your car, without you planning that in advance, and hence getting any keys you need.
I used to do the same thing with my laptop. I had it locked to my laptop bag, and I'd just make sure the bag was hooked around something, usually my leg or the chair leg. I could leave it locked like that even when I put it back in the bag.
Much easier than locking and unlocking it.
Someone should make a retractable cord that attaches to the laptop lock hole that you just pull out and loop around something, maybe with a hook on the end so you can hook it back to itself. Gives you 'grab' protection, without any hassle at all. (Hell, you could almost do that with existing locks, except that you can't have the 'loop' open and have them stay attached to the laptop.)
Doesn't protect against someone taking them when they're unattended, but who the heck does that even with a lock?
I can't really say I understand how some people manage to constantly misplace bags, I've had several girlfriends who would put their bag/purse down the moment they went indoors or sat down and then they'd be surprised that they'd miss 2/3 of all their incoming calls
I find the 'instantly losing keys/whatever' to be to be sorta stupid, too.
Yes, yes, no one means to set them down in the wrong place, they do that automatically when they have them in their hand. So, um STOP CARRYING THEM IN YOUR HAND. Sheesh.
Things leave your pockets to get used, then put back, then get placed in the correct place. Until then, they stay in your pocket, especially if they can't help 'escaping'. This is not rocket surgery.
This is, of course, assuming that there is a 'correct place'. I'm even more baffled by people who lose their keys and don't seem to know where they are 'supposed' to be. I mean, in the strictest sense, are they even 'lost' at that point? For all anyone knows, they're exactly where they belong.
However, I have to put in a word for women and their cell phones. The reason they aren't answering their cell phone is that the cellphone is in the purse, correct. Likewise, often they let them go dead, and simply forget to manage them at all.
I used to complain this was stupid, and ask why they didn't carry them in their pocket. Just because they have a pocket book doesn't mean they need to keep their cellphone in it. Nor their keys, for that matter. I once saw a 'safety' thing telling women to get their keys out of their purse before going to their car in big dark parking lots, and had wonder why they'd be in there anyway.
What I didn't, and what most men don't, realize is women are, for some entirely inane reason, being sold clothing without actual usable pockets. Many women don't even realize this is happening. Sure, they know some of their clothing doesn't have pockets in it, but they don't realize the existing pockets on their pants are microscopic compared to men.
Aside to women: Right now, I can fit two paperback books in a single pants' pocket. (Pant's pocket? Is one side of 'pants' a 'pant'?) I can also fit a soft drink can in them. Easily. These are fairly normal shorts...I've had blue jeans where I could only get one book in a front pocket. I'm not the thinnest guy in the world, I think these are 34s, but I assure that all men's pants' pockets are this big.
You, OTOH, appear to have pants where you'd be lucky to fit a small deodorant in them. Or, as the case here is, a cell phone. The opening is roughly the same size, but it seems to go maybe three inches and is straight down. It's much much bigger for men. (There's some weird dirty joke there, but I can't figure it out.)
Whatever they are selling you, pitch a fit over such stupid sexism. Women have the equal right to as big a pocket as men do. And there's nothing stopping there from being pockets on most skirts and dresses, either. Sure, some incredibly formal or some incredibly sexy clothing probably wouldn't want them, but everything else should have them.
Oh, but you're stupid weak women, who don't need such things, you carry around huge purses everywhere and certainly don't need the ability to keep in touch using cellphones. I can't believe you gals put up with such sexism, and I'm just forced to conclude you honestly don't know how you're being shortchanged in the pockets department. Seriously, find a male friend, and borrow some shorts, and put them on (It's okay if they're too big.) and stick your hands in your pockets.
Heh, I never lose my keys either, but used to just throw them anywhere in my pocket. Since getting an iPhone, though, I'm trying to train myself that phone goes in left pocket, keys in right.
You don't have an auto-destruct in your car? If someone steals my car, it sprays gasoline all over the inside and engine and then catches on fire.
(I actually was trying really hard to not make that look punny, but 'autodestruct' looked weird.)
No shit.
I've occasionally run across people who seem to think hidden keys are insecure.
Keys hidden under the welcome mat or on your sun visor are insecure.
But anywhere else, somewhere that takes more than thirty seconds to find, they've already broken a window or used a slim jim to get in and hotwired the car.
Everyone knows security is only as strong as its weakest link. But, people don't realize, conversely, any added weakness in security that is harder to exploit than the weaknesses that everything has is not a weakness at all. Because criminals will just do the thing that is a) faster, and b) they know works.
Why are you carrying around a key to the front and a key to the back? Do you often need to go in two doors at once?
Seriously, I've lived in places with unmatched keys, and, um, I carry enough keys to open one door. The one closest to where I always arrive at the house. I use these keys to get in. Which is, I believe, the entire point of carrying keys.
I suppose there could be some configuration of a place where you often arrive from different directions, in a city or something, but it can't be that common even there.
And, hell, if that happens, you can use two keyrings. (Considering that you're probably walking to your car in one direction, and not to your car in the others, that makes sense anyway.)
I mentioned this in another thread, but here's the best analogy:
A subdivision starts selling houses where, in the housing covenant, they demand you purchase all food at your house from them. You can't even get it for free and bring it in. (You could eat it somewhere else, though. This only applies to your house.)
They have some magical arch that keeps food from coming in at the entrance, and it works. Some people manage to break a hole in the fence and bring food in, but they keep cracking down on that. They even assert it's illegal, although they've never done anything with that claim.
This is, in essence, what Apple has done. But, don't worry, it's to protect us from spoiled food.
This bitching about Flash is like bitching that the subdivision store doesn't sell Pepsi. That might be an issue for dumb people, but isn't really the actual issue when you think about it.
In a world where courts and legislatures actually understood electronic devices, this would be stamped out as rapidly if someone tried the subdivision trick.
I don't know what you're talking about with the ITouch.
I have an iPhone, and hooking it up to any computer exposes the pictures...and only the pictures. You can't get to the MP3s or anything, but you can get to the pictures.
I mean, that's just bad as what you said, but the pictures are essentially the one thing you can get off Apple devices via the standard USB flash-drive interface.
That is an incredibly stupid analogy. The problem isn't what Apple sells. It's one thing for Apple to choose not to sell the apps. But that store is the only place you can get anything on the device at all. Paying or for free. A device you own.
It's more akin to subdivision requiring all people who live there to use only the subdivision's grocery store, via a housing covenant, and they can purchase no other food elsewhere. Hell, they can't even get free food elsewhere.
And you can't buy Pepsi products there, and everyone is bitching about that because everyone like Flash, er, Pepsi, but that's not the real problem with that absurd arrangement, now is it?
You'll also note that, just like Apple's arrangement with their App Store, such a thing is probably legal.
However, because courts and lawmakers understand physical freedom, such a thing would almost certainly not be legal for long if places actually started doing it. (And, for all I know, it's already happened and been banned. Possibly back when 'company stores' operated in 'company towns'.)
But that's the real world. Courts and lawmakers don't seem to grasp that magical electronic world, where apparently everyone can demand you do whatever they say, under any circumstances, as long as you're using something that, at some point, belonged to them. They can make whatever outrageous demands they want, have whatever absurd restrictions they want, and it's all okay, because, apparently, the word 'electronic' is in there somewhere. In fact, they've even managed, in some cases, to make breaking such restrictions criminal.
Newsflash for people who've been drinking the corporatism kool-aid: Sellers do not have the right to impose whatever terms they want on purchasers. Nor do they have the right to sell products in whatever form they want.
Many people have essentially made TVs they can install software on. They're called HTPCs. They're PCs hooked to TVs. So the market clearly exists
Granted, that's not the actual TV, but TVs probably have incredibly shitty general-purpose processors anyway, no input except a remote, almost no memory, and I'm not entirely sure what you'd have them do, anyway. I suspect they don't even have general graphics output...that's probably some video chip that can only print certain things in certain places, it's not like you can display images. And, of course, they have no network connection or storage space anyway.
I'm not sure anyone thinks rewriting a 64k firmware to build an OS that can print text and volume sliders on the screen in response to remote control presses would be a good use of their time. Not when you can just hook a PC to it and be done with it.
And that goes double for microwaves, which are even crappier and have almost no output. Hell, they're only general purpose CPUs because those are cheaper at this point than writing a custom processor. What are you going to do, reprogram your $80 microwave as a $1 calculator?
The reason that no one cares about 'fully closed systems with no access for you to install software' is that those things can't be used to do anything even slightly useful with, and no software exists for them, and no one can even conceive of useful software for them, because they are of such limited functionality and connectivity.
I'm sure you think you're clever and all thinking that the issue is what is technically a 'computer', and pointing out they're everywhere, but no one actually said anything about general purpose CPUs or 'computers'. They have a problem with devices they'd want to install software on that they can't, as was clearly said. There's no one standing around with a piece of software they want to install on a microwave or TV. (Although, as I said, there probably is a market for TVs with enough processing and storage that you can install software on them.)
The video and game rental industry companies need to build a better mailpiece to protect their content.
No, what actually needs to happen is that the Post Office needs to recognize that people mail DVDs, and to actually meet the demand and construct a cheap-as-possible box that, never-the-less, will get through mailing intact.
Or even have a cheap one with a slight chance of breakage, and a more expensive one with almost no chance.
And then sell them, with and without postage, which should be a set standard rate for said box with a CD/DVD in it.
I work for a company that mails DVDs out occassionally, and, let me tell you, it's a hassle. We're having to use photo mailers. The post office doesn't even sell CD mailers except for CDs in jewel cases. (Who the hell ships CDs in jewel cases?)
Now, Netflix and whoever might want to make their own mailers, for cheaper or whatever.
But what about normal people who just want to send a DVD across the country? The post office doesn't provide mailers. It's nearly impossible to find any DVD non-jewel case mailer, in fact. And once you get one, you have to actually take it in and have it weighed, because it's certainly not a standard size.
Don't whine and bitch that people should 'pay the extra postage'. Give them a damn box they can buy to ship a DVD in that actually is some standard size with standard postage, sold with whatever postage is needed to cover the cost. You've got two of those for photos, why not one for DVDs?
I'm not entirely certain Netflix gets a special deal at all, because the DVD publishers aren't really fans of DVD rental at all. In fact, there have been efforts to ban such a thing, at least back in the VHS days.
However, they certainly aren't paying 'retail'. I'm sure they can get the DVD wholesale, or close to it. I mean, if you're wanting to buy 5,000 copies of a DVD, the place selling to you doesn't care if you're Best Buy and want to resell them or Netflix and want to rent them or some random Joe who wants to build a house out of them...you're paying less than store price if you show up with an order that big, especially if you do it over and over again with different DVDs.
That said, at times, Blockbuster has paid more than 'retail'. Not because they're idiots, but because, sometimes, movies come out of 'high prices DVD' for a three months or so before the price is dropped, specifically so that video rental stores can show up, pay outrageous prices, and advertise that they have Hit Hollywood Movie #2947 available while people still can't buy it in stores. At least, not the local Walmart. People could technically buy it if they tracked down a wholesaler, although they'd pay out the nose and probably have to order at least a 10 copies. (I don't know if this 'early release' still happens...hell, I have no idea what happens at video rental places anymore.)
In other words, the only history of cooperation that movie studios have with movie rental places, once they were forced to admit that they were legal, was setting up a system where sometimes they pay more than retail. They consider DVD rentals to be cannibalizing their profits. (This is why they invented DivX, the self-destructing DVD, which was them trying to get in the rental business themselves.)
It's extremely unlikely they're specifically giving Netflix any discount on DVDs. I can see them possibly setting up a system where they make Netflix-only DVDs, without packaging and stuff, and sell them for slightly cheaper, if that makes them a little more money. (I.e., if the packaging is $1.50, they might make it without the packaging and sell it for a $1 less.) But that's about all I can see them doing.
The USPS is indeed a government agency. It is one that is funded entirely by itself, but it is indeed a government agency.
Fannie Mae is a non-profit private organization that was created by the government and spun off. It is entirely separate now.
Major League Baseball has no 'special relationship' with the federal government at all.
Since USPS seems to be giving special handling to the Netflix disks, apparently due to the employees' reluctance to perform processing that results in damage to the goods, and the costs of withdrawing the pieces and handling them separately is almost certainly not included in the USPS pricing for handling them, it seems that the outcome will likely not be to extend this special handling to more mailers, but to standardize the handling of all mail containing disks, with, most likely, a higher price for doing so.
See, this is what is called 'begging the question'. (People who misuse that expression, take note.)
I see no evidence at all that USPS does such a thing, nor can I comprehend why they would do so.
In fact, USPS has no reason at all to treat Netflix DVDs well, especially compared to other companies.
Companies that have options of shipping, like USPS vs. UPS vs. FedEx, will move elsewhere if packages get damaged in shipping. Netflix, however, has such high volume that moving elsewhere would kill it. Or, rather, a high ship volume to sales volume ratio, if you see what I'm saying.
So USPS really can treat them like crap, whereas it couldn't do that to, for example, Barnes & Noble if they used USPS to ship. Because Barnes & Noble can move elsewhere (And, indeed, is elsewhere.), whereas Netflix can't actually afford to ship packages back and forth using UPS. (Especially not back! Home pickup costs alone would kill them.)
So, like I said, I can't comprehend why USPS would be treating Netflix nicely.
He's complaining about the DVDs he's dropping off getting damaged by the mail worker.
No he's not, you illiterate fuck.
Mailmen do not shove mail they are picking up into a mailbox. Um, duh.
He's complaining about the DVD's he's receiving getting damaged by the mail worker before he receives them.
And there are plenty of other clues about that in his comment, if you aren't an illiterate fuck.
For example, he reduced his total amount from 1 to 4, which only makes sense in reducing the amount sent to him at once. If the amount going out was a problem, he could just send back one at a time even if he had 4 at a time, with only a slight reduction in turnover speed. So if the problem was sending, duh, he would just send one every day.
But, of course, he's actually have a problem with receiving, which, because of the vagaries of the mail system, means he couldn't safely have sent two back at one, or he might get the next two at the same time. So at all times, he'd have to have three in his possession, and as the entire point of having that many out is to keep half of them 'in the air' so you get new videos every day, he cut back. (Why he switched to 'one out' instead of 'two out', which would be just as safe if he's always holding one, I don't know. That would seem a better choice. Perhaps there is not a 'two out'.)
Likewise, another clue he's talking about receiving is that he talks about the DVDs being unplayable. Hey, illiterate fuck, why the hell would he know how 'playable' a DVD was when received back by Netflix? Are they calling him up, saying 'One of these DVDs has broken and another has warped so badly that it became completely unplayable'? Even if they were charging people for broke-in-shipping DVDs, which I doubt, but even if they were, they'd hardly inform him specifically in what manner the CDs were broken.
Dude, just making stuff up doesn't make it true.
A drop box is a public or semi-public send-only mailbox that anyone can put stuff in.
It has nothing to do with how you get your mail, you idjit. You can use a drop box and have a PO box, you can use one and have a normal mailbox (I do this, especially with sending checks, if I'm going to town anyway. A dropbox at a mall is much safer than leaving it in your mailbox with a flag up.), you can use one and collect at general delivery, you can use one without any ability to be mailed back at all. (I wonder what you put on the return address if so?)
Now, if you have a PO box, you don't have a private sending box, so you essentially either have to use a public dropbox (Probably the one right at the post office.), or hand it in to a person at the post office, or catch a mailman walking by.
But the fact that people with PO boxes tend to use dropboxes doesn't mean they are, in the slightest way, related, and dropboxes certainly aren't a form of PO box.
The USPS is a non-profit company because that is the way they are defined to be under the law that created them.
Actual entities created by random people have one of several specific statuses under the law, from publicly traded company to non-profit and everything in between.
The post office, however, is specifically created under a specific law, and thus has its own unique status.
This status is, FYI, actually more limited than a non-profit. The post office is only allowed to make or lose a certain percentage, unlike a non-profit, which can actually make a lot of money. (They just keeps the money to spend later, instead of paying out a profit.)
Indeed there's a suggestion (though unclear) that IE9 may support whatever codecs are installed with WMP:
I would actually be amazed if this didn't happen. That can't help but be in Microsoft's best interests.
Likewise, I would be amazed if web browsers, IE9 included, didn't do 'codec lookups' when faced with something they don't understand.
But like you said, a standardize container is much better than what we have now, where everyone is essentially downloading a Flash program to play video, which is just crazy.
Arabian Nights did not use flashbacks, you idjit. Arabian Nights used a framing story to tell multiple short stories.
And googling things that other people have mentioned is not actually a useful post, you karma whore. Luckily, no one seems to have fallen for it.
As I mentioned above, anime's been doing this sort of thing for a while. As have video games, aka, Planescape: Torment.
But there's a very large difference between an imported TV show that maybe a hundred thousand Americans see vs. a show with ratings of 12 million. The later demonstrates that this sort of thing can be popular outside of small genres with dedicated fans.
Lost is the 'format definer' for a new generation of shows.
Not the inventor, possibly not the best already, and certainly not the best forever, but it's going to be to this format like 'Star Trek' was to 'space opera'. I don't know what the format will be called ...'revelation shows'?
It is, in a sense, an ontological mystery, 'how did we get here?' but a generalized one rather than the more specific 'locked in a room' one. 'How did we get to this point in our lives that this is happening to us?'
At times, Lost played with the idea that perhaps it was a straight ontological mystery, perhaps they were in another universe or something, but in the end it turns out they did know how they got to the island...they crashed there. The island may be something else too, but it is also an actual place you can arrive at and leave, and they did actually arrive there via their actual plane crashing into it, and some of them really did leave there via helicopter/boat.
That aside, there's nothing particularly innovative in Lost's storytelling. People's tastes in art are so conservative that people forget that most of these "new" ideas date back decades if not longer. You can look back to the 1960s and the work of Ballard to find novels told in a form far more experimental than any television series has absorbed.
Some experimental novels does not equal a TV show watched by 12 million people. Of course a massively popular TV show didn't invent what it was doing. That doesn't change the fact that a rating topper is doing it, which changes everything.
There's a valid objection to calling it 'hypertext', which is just a stupid name. But television has gotten amazingly complex over the last decade or two, especially since producers can start assuming that you've watched every episode of the show, in order.
Seriously, compare the plot of a random House episode with the plot of a random 1980 medical drama. They have to have all sorts of added twists and whatnot.
Hell, compare an episode of I Love Lucy to an average sitcom. Even the modern dumbest sitcom has to provide two plotlines.
With Lost, it was demonstrated that audience will follow convoluted tons of characters and time-travel plots and out-of-order flashbacks and slow multi-season reveals. Even if the audience itself doesn't think this, and has to be tricked into watching at the start.
This is well past, like three times as much, what even the most complicated TV mainstream show did before it. (Yes, yes, I'm sure someone's going to point to some obscure anime that maybe 200,000 people have ever seen. That's not really the same thing.) It's raised the bar of what the television networks think the audience will put up with.
Ah, okay.
I really don't know much about consoles. And I certainly wouldn't buy a Sony one!