I think you grossly oversimplify the device's functionality. It's like a VCR, yes, but with an 80 hour tape, but with a couple buttons that do everything you'd ever want it to do...without you recording from one tape to another or doing anything that requires looking through tv guide or programming the device.
The point is that it's many times easier to do desired actions. Record from one videotape to another? How often do you do that? TiVo lets you sit down and in about 20 minutes select all the TV shows you'll want to watch in the next few weeks. Pick out two Tarantino movies? It'll grab another one for you. Don't want to watch it? Delete it, or ignore the listing and it will go away. How is that a 'nightmare?'
The fee you pay is for a service...the TV listings. You can hack your machine to use free ones instead. It's also usable without listings, though it has limited uses. You think it's crazy to pay for it, but you must get it from somewhere...the cable/satellite box, or tv guide. You're paying for it there, too.
You also miss the point as far as recording live TV. Let's say at 9 you sit down to watch your favorite show, when you suddenly remember you forgot to compile the latest kernel build. When you come back and sit down at 9:15 to watch it, you can zip through all the commercials, and by 10 pm, you're back in the present.
Essential? Maybe not, but a step backward? Please! That just means you haven't learned all of the capabilities.
For one thing, I'd like to know how much space is devoted to series 1 vs. series 2. For that matter, any space devoted to the differences between TiVo software versions, and whether v.4 "improvements" have made them harder to hack. This seems to be a review of the author and his enthusiasm.
I just got a series 2, and this book is supposedly on its way, but I'm still thirsty for more information. At this point, I'm this close to sending it back and getting two used series 1s.
Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, but other than some hardware upgrades, it looks like Series 2 simply makes it possible for them to sell me networking services (at $99 per box) and another box. That brings my investment to $600-800 for two TVs? AND I'm not allowed to extract video to my own network? WTF? It seems like I can get two (albeit smaller) reconditioned units for $300 and run it through my current network.
I've thought about the whole mythTv thing, but I think I'd rather have two 'dumb' boxes by the TV and run the whole thing through my network...I should have a storage server soon.
Right, the point of the article is that this makes it almost impossible to determine which ISP to contact (without ordering a bottle of Viagra and tracing the money trail.)
The theory is, if there's nothing valuable on the bike, nobody will bother stealing it. Use a front brake til you get your skills together.
It might be tricky to learn how at first, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be forever hooked, and won't be happy until you build fifteen pounds of funk.
Just fold the wheels in or out. Check them out here. Though something tells me they're not built for longevity.
If it were me, I would do, in the following order:
1. A cheap bike 2. A folding bike 3. expensive roller blades designed for distance 4. Jog (1.5 hours of this every day and you'll live to be 100 if you take care of your joints) 5. vespa (or something like it but more dependable)
I would not recommend a foldable scooter or a skateboard. I've done these distances on each of these. After a while, they are mind-numbingly boring, exceptionally hard on your body (not muscle-building exercise, but blister-building), and plus, they will build your muscles in an unattractive, lopsided-quasimodo sort of way. Unless you can ride 'goofy footed' half the way, which most people cannot.
ok, kidding. sort of. You could use PDAs (ok, not cheap, but lots of people have them) and use a 'base station' for each clump of people.
I wouldn't want to implement it (any idea what the collision issues would be, anyone?). but hey, it's an idea.
how about cell phones for that matter. or sms-enabled pagers. seems like there are devices out there that do similar things, just not in such enclosed spaces.
I agree completely. I recently squished my Visor, and after doing all the research for a new PDA/phone combo, ended up buying another Visor on eBay (though you can still buy reconditioned ones from handspring).
Granted, I want nothing more than a Palm and a phone, in one device. I guess Samsung is coming out with one in Europe, but it looks to be expensive.
At one point (before they EOL'ed the whole line), you could get a Visor + VisorPhone for about $100. Now, 2 years later, you get them combined...for $400? (ok, it's $49/$199, depending on which company you sign your life over to for 2 years.)
Plus mine is GSM...remember that whole "you can get a new phone, slip the GSM card in, and your phone works, without a new plan" selling point? Turns out the bastards want $600 for the Treo if I keep using my own GSM card! (For the record, I want to keep it, since around the time my 1-year obligation wore off, my carrier called me up and offered me some cheap month-to-month plan with free long distance, a zillion minutes, etc.)
To top it off, they now want in on the data stream side of things, so they try to hardsell you a dialup account -- though you can get one on your own for next to nothing, if you don't already have one.
So, just to recap, it was a non-expandable (if slightly smaller) version of what I had, for $600 if I keep my own plan, or $49-199 if I sign up for a new two year plan. or, buy a used one on eBay for nearly nothing.
Break the upgrade cycle and maybe the bastards will start treating us like intelligent consumers.
If you really want to get a hybrid car, consider looking for a used Toyota Prius, perhaps sold by some Yuppie asshole who only bought it to be trendy, and wants to trade up to a Mini Cooper S now that Minis are considered the New Hotness.
No, I define a yuppie asshole as one of the 50,000 people on the road every rush hour, driving alone, too slow in their SUV, eating egg mcmuffins and chatting on the phone. btw, it's not all about money. Ever consider where the pounds of carbon waste go when they exit your tailpipe? Someone's lungs. Maybe your own.
Sorry, kids, we have to give up the house and move into an apartment. We'll have to sell a bunch of stuff at a yerd sale to make the squeeze, but that's ok, because we need the cash. Your mom won't be able to look after you all day, so it's off to daycare while she's being underpaid at a 9 to 5 job. We were hoping to put some cash away so you could go to the college of your dreams, but when that time comes, you'll have a couple semi-local mediocre state schools to choose from.
You see, daddy got offered a job at SCO, but he didn't take it, and there's not much else out there at the moment. We have daddy's health, self-esteem and career to worry about.
That is, if you have a single webcast, round the clock, at the above rates, would that make it $10.08 per month per webcast or per user?
In the former case, then who cares, you can fire up 10 round-the-clock distinct webcasts for about $100/month. Seems fair.
If it's per user, then 100 round-the-clock listeners would put you at $1000/month. That would be like a radio station paying these fees according to how many listeners they have at any given moment, not an approximate fee based on how many people might be listening.
Just wondering, I don't know how this pricing was planned, or even how the radio equivalent is, myself.
That's not a flat fee, that's per webcast. About $10/month
By far, the most important factor in being able to find and purchase music is that it has to be recommended to me by a person with similar tastes, i.e. I like to see what that person's "Top 50" albums are, and that lets me know if I'm going to listen to their recommendations.
Also, I'd like some comparisons, what kind of music does it sound like.
Of course, listening to samples is key, but there's so much music out there (esp. indie music with little exposure otherwise), that simply filtering and sorting it out is too time consuming without trusted referrals.
...at least in this case, I wouldn't say anything is 'out of reach' -- the gems of wisdom imparted in the lecture are available in his 6,000 page book that covers the subject. (ok, maybe 1,200 pages but you get the picture). If you're not familiar with the material, you can get a lot more from reading a critique of the book. If you are familiar, you pretty much sit there and wonder whatever made you think *you* were so smart.
There is a lot of relevant content on a number of his websites...he kept telling us to read and re-read different sections of the book.
I saw this lecture in Chicago, and it's not unlike walking off the street into a 400-level physics course. A brilliant professor walks in and immediately gets started, armed with a few powerpoint slides and ultradry jokes, he steamrolls through the first 300 pages of his book in 60 minutes. An audio stream of this isn't going to make or break your understanding on the subject.
I imagine a sign language translator would have their hands full (so to speak) trying to keep up with him.
It's not that US businesses 'don't recognize the world out there'...it's that your beloved EU countries have so many archaic, self-protecting, obstacle-building laws to protect their own nation's businesses.
Don't get me wrong, I love Europe as well, but perhaps you should think about the fact that they are engaging in an ongoing tariff war to make it impossible for US and other international businesses to compete with some of their nationalized/subsidized companies. Seems that knife cuts two ways, now doesn't it?
Why do US companies mostly sell in the US? Don't blame us, blame the archaic EU and their maze of rules to protect: -consumers -nationalized industries -subsidized companies
Imagine if you were to do business in the US and each state had 12 specific rules when it comes to completing a sale via the web...you'd basically go for California and maybe another populous state and write off the rest.
We thought about doing this awhile back, and here are just a few of the reasons why we bagged it: French servers needed to be physically located in France, as did Italian ones. There are at least 3 different sets of laws that constrain a company when it comes to returns: Imagine you sell something, and after a while, the user wants their money back...and you're obliged to give it to them or face the wrath of their country's laws. Shipping can be a serious pain in the ass. Imagine getting your computer and Hungarian customs has swiped a few discs. The VAT. Add 17% to the price of everything. The rules are 'changing' (some of the above may no longer be true) so as soon as you're compliant with 12 countries, 3 others change the rules to make it 'easier' for businesses.
The fact is, Europe knows this is holding them back, but there are so many protective clauses that will get politicians slaughtered if they are rolled back. Your friendly neighborhood Hungarian PC maker would be quite upset if you could order from Dell.com.
Don't get me wrong, I love Europe, loved living there, and would prefer it to 99.9% of the places in the states, but for better or worse, our culture is set up to get business moving: one dot-com, 300 million potential customers. Europe: one dot-com per country, 2-20 million potential customers.
It's not going to happen until these countries release their grips on tariff mentality.
This is so ridiculous. Java is the phone's killer app? I have a visorphone, and it has a stable of useful, freely available apps that run sans java. Telnet, a browser, and about a zillion other kinds of *ware that I can try out, without buying it from a freakin' phone company.
Granted, it's great to have a stable, widely-developed platform built-in, but it remains to be seen what it will be used for. Geotargeted coupons? Kill me now. "Excuse me, my wife's in labor, I have to take this call...$5 OFF THE STARBUCKS YOU'RE DRIVING BY RIGHT NOW"
ok, so there are vast commercial possibilities, but open- and closed-channel radio systems have been available for many years; only now are they economically feasible for consumers. With my visorphone, I can call anyone in my phone book in 3 or 4 clicks...but with 'click to talk' I can bring that down to one click. It's a CB radio!
What they're saying is, now it's convenient for them to try and sell us more shit we don't need, services we never asked for, and new ways to nickel and dime us. and a new phone every 8 months.
I mean really, selling ring tones, downloadable games, and SMS for a nickel a message? Thanks but no thanks. Fight the upgrade cycle. Get a couple extra batteries for your next phone and keep it for years.
making it *slower* than (upgraded) 802.11b
on
802.11g Slows Down
·
· Score: 3, Informative
hm.
U.S. Robotics has a free software upgrade for their 802.11b products, getting it up to about 54+ Mbps (ok, so you have to run it in a homogenous USR-upgraded 802.11b environment to get 54 Mbps throughput). You can also run 256-bit WEP as a bonus, something not available in.g.
That makes 802.11b about 50% cheaper, some degree safer, and 100% faster? I think I'll skip this upgrade for now.
...so they won't work on the critters in the walls.
The sound frequency is damped right out of existence upon hitting something, so using them in a space with lots of corners, furniture, or sonic shadows will be fruitless. Though, if you knew they were all entering your house through a certain cleared-out area, it might be worth flooding that space with them. Otherwise, I think it will cost a fortune, have limited success, and, based on other another poster's comment, may give you headaches or brain damage.
Personally, having kids prevented me from putting out too many traps, and chemicals were out of the question.
First of all, you have to get rid of their entry points, clog up their traffic routes in the walls, and trap the ones that start walking through your living room as a result. I live in an old bungalow, and was surprised to find that behind my baseboards, there was enough room to roll a baseball through (just like in the cartoons, they had set up a little world back there).
The most effective thing that worked for me (outside of getting a cat) was to pull up the baseboard molding around a few rooms (especially the kitchen), and fill it with 'expanding foam spray.' The mouse superhighway was gone. I caught a couple with traps, but they never came back. It also made my house a bit less drafty. I filled in any space where I thought they may be able to enter the house, either with foam or ultra-fine steel wool (mice won't try to chew through it).
Low tech, but effective. It cost me about $10 total, compared to $5-$25 for each of the ultrasonic devices.
First of all, it can't use javascript, because anything that can't be displayed on my 1984 casio digital watch (running slackware via the CLI) isn't really a website anyway. Same goes for tables, XML, pixel gifs, images that use more than 8 bits of color, and true type fonts, though CSS and a DTD are mandatory.
And secondly, it's got to look good running at 64 x 48 pixels. Some people need to look at their monitors from the next room using an inverted pair of binoculars.
Finally, under no circumstances shall you take into consideration the content being displayed. My blog (dedicated to the daily minutiae of my plants and their arcing patterns toward sunlight) easily satisfies all of these requirements, so why shouldn't a consumer-oriented, dynamic, international news site be able to do it too?
Slashdot Mirror
I think you grossly oversimplify the device's functionality. It's like a VCR, yes, but with an 80 hour tape, but with a couple buttons that do everything you'd ever want it to do...without you recording from one tape to another or doing anything that requires looking through tv guide or programming the device.
The point is that it's many times easier to do desired actions. Record from one videotape to another? How often do you do that? TiVo lets you sit down and in about 20 minutes select all the TV shows you'll want to watch in the next few weeks. Pick out two Tarantino movies? It'll grab another one for you. Don't want to watch it? Delete it, or ignore the listing and it will go away. How is that a 'nightmare?'
The fee you pay is for a service...the TV listings. You can hack your machine to use free ones instead. It's also usable without listings, though it has limited uses. You think it's crazy to pay for it, but you must get it from somewhere...the cable/satellite box, or tv guide. You're paying for it there, too.
You also miss the point as far as recording live TV. Let's say at 9 you sit down to watch your favorite show, when you suddenly remember you forgot to compile the latest kernel build. When you come back and sit down at 9:15 to watch it, you can zip through all the commercials, and by 10 pm, you're back in the present.
Essential? Maybe not, but a step backward? Please! That just means you haven't learned all of the capabilities.
For one thing, I'd like to know how much space is devoted to series 1 vs. series 2. For that matter, any space devoted to the differences between TiVo software versions, and whether v.4 "improvements" have made them harder to hack. This seems to be a review of the author and his enthusiasm.
I just got a series 2, and this book is supposedly on its way, but I'm still thirsty for more information. At this point, I'm this close to sending it back and getting two used series 1s.
Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, but other than some hardware upgrades, it looks like Series 2 simply makes it possible for them to sell me networking services (at $99 per box) and another box. That brings my investment to $600-800 for two TVs? AND I'm not allowed to extract video to my own network? WTF? It seems like I can get two (albeit smaller) reconditioned units for $300 and run it through my current network.
I've thought about the whole mythTv thing, but I think I'd rather have two 'dumb' boxes by the TV and run the whole thing through my network...I should have a storage server soon.
Any advice?
Right, the point of the article is that this makes it almost impossible to determine which ISP to contact (without ordering a bottle of Viagra and tracing the money trail.)
You should be able to find one on ebay for $100.
The theory is, if there's nothing valuable on the bike, nobody will bother stealing it. Use a front brake til you get your skills together.
It might be tricky to learn how at first, but once you get the hang of it, you'll be forever hooked, and won't be happy until you build fifteen pounds of funk.
Just fold the wheels in or out. Check them out here. Though something tells me they're not built for longevity.
If it were me, I would do, in the following order:
1. A cheap bike
2. A folding bike
3. expensive roller blades designed for distance
4. Jog (1.5 hours of this every day and you'll live to be 100 if you take care of your joints)
5. vespa (or something like it but more dependable)
I would not recommend a foldable scooter or a skateboard. I've done these distances on each of these. After a while, they are mind-numbingly boring, exceptionally hard on your body (not muscle-building exercise, but blister-building), and plus, they will build your muscles in an unattractive, lopsided-quasimodo sort of way. Unless you can ride 'goofy footed' half the way, which most people cannot.
bluetooth!
ok, kidding. sort of. You could use PDAs (ok, not cheap, but lots of people have them) and use a 'base station' for each clump of people.
I wouldn't want to implement it (any idea what the collision issues would be, anyone?). but hey, it's an idea.
how about cell phones for that matter. or sms-enabled pagers. seems like there are devices out there that do similar things, just not in such enclosed spaces.
1. Wardrive Hilary Rosen's house
2. Connect to her open 802.11x network
3. Share every song in existence
4. Subpoena!
I agree completely. I recently squished my Visor, and after doing all the research for a new PDA/phone combo, ended up buying another Visor on eBay (though you can still buy reconditioned ones from handspring).
Granted, I want nothing more than a Palm and a phone, in one device. I guess Samsung is coming out with one in Europe, but it looks to be expensive.
At one point (before they EOL'ed the whole line), you could get a Visor + VisorPhone for about $100. Now, 2 years later, you get them combined...for $400? (ok, it's $49/$199, depending on which company you sign your life over to for 2 years.)
Plus mine is GSM...remember that whole "you can get a new phone, slip the GSM card in, and your phone works, without a new plan" selling point? Turns out the bastards want $600 for the Treo if I keep using my own GSM card! (For the record, I want to keep it, since around the time my 1-year obligation wore off, my carrier called me up and offered me some cheap month-to-month plan with free long distance, a zillion minutes, etc.)
To top it off, they now want in on the data stream side of things, so they try to hardsell you a dialup account -- though you can get one on your own for next to nothing, if you don't already have one.
So, just to recap, it was a non-expandable (if slightly smaller) version of what I had, for $600 if I keep my own plan, or $49-199 if I sign up for a new two year plan. or, buy a used one on eBay for nearly nothing.
Break the upgrade cycle and maybe the bastards will start treating us like intelligent consumers.
You forgot to factor in a $2000 tax credit. That puts the hybrid ahead in the finance department.
You also neglect to mention that it's a more socially responsible thing to do. Half as many pounds of carbon waste for you to breathe.
The number of children hospitalized for asthma in urban areas can be directly correlated to the ground level ozone.
If you really want to get a hybrid car, consider looking for a used Toyota Prius, perhaps sold by some Yuppie asshole who only bought it to be trendy, and wants to trade up to a Mini Cooper S now that Minis are considered the New Hotness.
No, I define a yuppie asshole as one of the 50,000 people on the road every rush hour, driving alone, too slow in their SUV, eating egg mcmuffins and chatting on the phone. btw, it's not all about money. Ever consider where the pounds of carbon waste go when they exit your tailpipe? Someone's lungs. Maybe your own.
plus it's socially responsible, and high ground level ozone levels leads to more asthma hospitalizations.
Not that anyone seems to give a rat's ass about the air we breathe, all the arguments here are about horsepower and saving money.
...because they are apparently selling them for $5-10k less than it costs to make them.
Granted, the hybrid technology eats up a chunk of that, but it's a chance to get a $30,000 car for $20k.
Eventually, the prices will go up, and manufacturing costs will go down, but they are still a good deal, what with the options they give away on them.
Sorry, kids, we have to give up the house and move into an apartment. We'll have to sell a bunch of stuff at a yerd sale to make the squeeze, but that's ok, because we need the cash. Your mom won't be able to look after you all day, so it's off to daycare while she's being underpaid at a 9 to 5 job. We were hoping to put some cash away so you could go to the college of your dreams, but when that time comes, you'll have a couple semi-local mediocre state schools to choose from.
You see, daddy got offered a job at SCO, but he didn't take it, and there's not much else out there at the moment. We have daddy's health, self-esteem and career to worry about.
wouldn't you have to have it translated into a dilbert cartoon first?
Is this per song, or per user?
That is, if you have a single webcast, round the clock, at the above rates, would that make it $10.08 per month per webcast or per user?
In the former case, then who cares, you can fire up 10 round-the-clock distinct webcasts for about $100/month. Seems fair.
If it's per user, then 100 round-the-clock listeners would put you at $1000/month. That would be like a radio station paying these fees according to how many listeners they have at any given moment, not an approximate fee based on how many people might be listening.
Just wondering, I don't know how this pricing was planned, or even how the radio equivalent is, myself.
That's not a flat fee, that's per webcast. About $10/month
That's per user.
point zero seven cents is the same as point zero zero zero dollars
By far, the most important factor in being able to find and purchase music is that it has to be recommended to me by a person with similar tastes, i.e. I like to see what that person's "Top 50" albums are, and that lets me know if I'm going to listen to their recommendations.
Also, I'd like some comparisons, what kind of music does it sound like.
Of course, listening to samples is key, but there's so much music out there (esp. indie music with little exposure otherwise), that simply filtering and sorting it out is too time consuming without trusted referrals.
...at least in this case, I wouldn't say anything is 'out of reach' -- the gems of wisdom imparted in the lecture are available in his 6,000 page book that covers the subject. (ok, maybe 1,200 pages but you get the picture). If you're not familiar with the material, you can get a lot more from reading a critique of the book. If you are familiar, you pretty much sit there and wonder whatever made you think *you* were so smart.
There is a lot of relevant content on a number of his websites...he kept telling us to read and re-read different sections of the book.
I saw this lecture in Chicago, and it's not unlike walking off the street into a 400-level physics course. A brilliant professor walks in and immediately gets started, armed with a few powerpoint slides and ultradry jokes, he steamrolls through the first 300 pages of his book in 60 minutes. An audio stream of this isn't going to make or break your understanding on the subject.
I imagine a sign language translator would have their hands full (so to speak) trying to keep up with him.
...now it's a first world country.
The first and second worlds are capitalist countries and communist countries, respectively, then developing countries make up the third...
Of course this definition of 'worlds' is fairly well regarded, though it has been disputed.
It's not that US businesses 'don't recognize the world out there'...it's that your beloved EU countries have so many archaic, self-protecting, obstacle-building laws to protect their own nation's businesses.
Don't get me wrong, I love Europe as well, but perhaps you should think about the fact that they are engaging in an ongoing tariff war to make it impossible for US and other international businesses to compete with some of their nationalized/subsidized companies. Seems that knife cuts two ways, now doesn't it?
Why do US companies mostly sell in the US? Don't blame us, blame the archaic EU and their maze of rules to protect:
-consumers
-nationalized industries
-subsidized companies
Imagine if you were to do business in the US and each state had 12 specific rules when it comes to completing a sale via the web...you'd basically go for California and maybe another populous state and write off the rest.
We thought about doing this awhile back, and here are just a few of the reasons why we bagged it:
French servers needed to be physically located in France, as did Italian ones.
There are at least 3 different sets of laws that constrain a company when it comes to returns: Imagine you sell something, and after a while, the user wants their money back...and you're obliged to give it to them or face the wrath of their country's laws.
Shipping can be a serious pain in the ass. Imagine getting your computer and Hungarian customs has swiped a few discs.
The VAT. Add 17% to the price of everything.
The rules are 'changing' (some of the above may no longer be true) so as soon as you're compliant with 12 countries, 3 others change the rules to make it 'easier' for businesses.
The fact is, Europe knows this is holding them back, but there are so many protective clauses that will get politicians slaughtered if they are rolled back. Your friendly neighborhood Hungarian PC maker would be quite upset if you could order from Dell.com.
Don't get me wrong, I love Europe, loved living there, and would prefer it to 99.9% of the places in the states, but for better or worse, our culture is set up to get business moving: one dot-com, 300 million potential customers. Europe: one dot-com per country, 2-20 million potential customers.
It's not going to happen until these countries release their grips on tariff mentality.
This is so ridiculous. Java is the phone's killer app? I have a visorphone, and it has a stable of useful, freely available apps that run sans java. Telnet, a browser, and about a zillion other kinds of *ware that I can try out, without buying it from a freakin' phone company.
Granted, it's great to have a stable, widely-developed platform built-in, but it remains to be seen what it will be used for. Geotargeted coupons? Kill me now. "Excuse me, my wife's in labor, I have to take this call...$5 OFF THE STARBUCKS YOU'RE DRIVING BY RIGHT NOW"
ok, so there are vast commercial possibilities, but open- and closed-channel radio systems have been available for many years; only now are they economically feasible for consumers. With my visorphone, I can call anyone in my phone book in 3 or 4 clicks...but with 'click to talk' I can bring that down to one click. It's a CB radio!
What they're saying is, now it's convenient for them to try and sell us more shit we don't need, services we never asked for, and new ways to nickel and dime us. and a new phone every 8 months.
I mean really, selling ring tones, downloadable games, and SMS for a nickel a message? Thanks but no thanks. Fight the upgrade cycle. Get a couple extra batteries for your next phone and keep it for years.
hm.
.g.
U.S. Robotics has a free software upgrade for their 802.11b products, getting it up to about 54+ Mbps (ok, so you have to run it in a homogenous USR-upgraded 802.11b environment to get 54 Mbps throughput). You can also run 256-bit WEP as a bonus, something not available in
That makes 802.11b about 50% cheaper, some degree safer, and 100% faster? I think I'll skip this upgrade for now.
...so they won't work on the critters in the walls.
The sound frequency is damped right out of existence upon hitting something, so using them in a space with lots of corners, furniture, or sonic shadows will be fruitless. Though, if you knew they were all entering your house through a certain cleared-out area, it might be worth flooding that space with them. Otherwise, I think it will cost a fortune, have limited success, and, based on other another poster's comment, may give you headaches or brain damage.
Personally, having kids prevented me from putting out too many traps, and chemicals were out of the question.
First of all, you have to get rid of their entry points, clog up their traffic routes in the walls, and trap the ones that start walking through your living room as a result. I live in an old bungalow, and was surprised to find that behind my baseboards, there was enough room to roll a baseball through (just like in the cartoons, they had set up a little world back there).
The most effective thing that worked for me (outside of getting a cat) was to pull up the baseboard molding around a few rooms (especially the kitchen), and fill it with 'expanding foam spray.' The mouse superhighway was gone. I caught a couple with traps, but they never came back. It also made my house a bit less drafty. I filled in any space where I thought they may be able to enter the house, either with foam or ultra-fine steel wool (mice won't try to chew through it).
Low tech, but effective. It cost me about $10 total, compared to $5-$25 for each of the ultrasonic devices.
First of all, it can't use javascript, because anything that can't be displayed on my 1984 casio digital watch (running slackware via the CLI) isn't really a website anyway. Same goes for tables, XML, pixel gifs, images that use more than 8 bits of color, and true type fonts, though CSS and a DTD are mandatory.
And secondly, it's got to look good running at 64 x 48 pixels. Some people need to look at their monitors from the next room using an inverted pair of binoculars.
Finally, under no circumstances shall you take into consideration the content being displayed. My blog (dedicated to the daily minutiae of my plants and their arcing patterns toward sunlight) easily satisfies all of these requirements, so why shouldn't a consumer-oriented, dynamic, international news site be able to do it too?