I don't remember if I own(ed - have a box of 2600 stuff somewhere) E.T., but I think Pac-Man on the 2600 was reasonable. It's fun.
Donkey Kong on the 2600 is the first time I remember being really disappointed by something I bought with my own money. $40 of paperboy money. (Wow, I'd never think of buying a $60 game nowadays, I always wait until they're about $20.. Lots of them I'm watching on Amazon go down to $15 routinely too.. Devil May Cry collection is $12.xy).
Spend your money how you want, on what you want. As long as you pay your taxes and follow the law, who gives a shit what you spend YOUR money on.
I agree with you, as long as I don't have to pay more social security, Medicare, etc., taxes to pay for these people who wasted their money on fancy cars when they were young instead of saving for retirement.
A house might turn out to be a positive investment, car never do.
For *regular* people, I'd agree with you. For the already rich, I disagree. Adam Carolla has given various examples of collector cars going way way way up in value. I think he has even bought some JUST to sell them later at an appreciated value. (Yes, just like someone investing in stocks.)
If you have an income of $1 million per year, but just started working, and you need a car NOW, to commute to work, you need a car loan.
If you need a car NOW, to commute, I'd suggest buying a used car. THEN, after you save some money, buy whatever you want (even if it's with a car loan, so you have some saved money to fall back on if necessary).
There is very little, if any, "green" Electricity. Dams block rivers, Nuclear is bad, Coal is bad, Gas/petrol is bad, wind kills birds that would shut down any other industry, solar has lots of toxic metals that need to be stripped mined....
Nice, Did they manage to overcome the $30,000 per battery problem? I mean to pay $30,000 for the 'fuel tank' that only lasts for about 300 fill ups is a bit worrying.
BTW, I don't have a Tesla and am unlikely to get one, at least for a few more generations, unless a used Roadster somehow becomes available REALLY cheap.
However, it was in the news a few days ago that the batteries are apparently lasting longer than was promised.
Movies have got so full of terribly boring repetitive ads which make my blood pressure boil upon the relentless pestering and consuming my time.
I'm not sure what you're talking about here. Are you talking about watching movies on *commercial TV*? If so, then you should be watching the movies via other means (HBO, DVD/BluRay, streaming services), so they're without commercials. Plus, you're not seeing the ENTIRE movie if you watch it on a commercial channel. (1) It's edited for time, to make it fit (with 25-33% commercials) in a specific time slot, usually 2 hours. (2) It's edited for content. I admit some older folks probably appreciate this part.
You MIGHT be talking about product placement, but I sure don't think that counts as "full of terribly boring repetitive ads".
As for the original question, it seems to me like a RedBox is EASIER than any of these other solutions for an older person. "A vending machine that gives out movies" seems like an easy thing to explain.
But what about the user? You can still buy(*) new phones running old versions of Android, and AFAIK, many of them will never get updates.
(*) I admit most of my knowledge on this comes from the CNET videos of phone reviews I see. TONS of the Android phone ones say "this still runs ", and only once in a while do they even mention that there will be an update available. (I am not inferring that if it's not mentioned, there WON'T be an update. I'm basing that part on real world examples of phones coming out and not ever being able to be updated officially.)
Wait, you're saying QA isn't writing bugs that have detailed steps to reproduce? If they are ones that can be easily reproduced, then they're not writing good bugs. (Obviously there are lots of bugs that are worth writing up that DON'T yet have reproducible cases yet.. sometimes a conglomeration of those not-reproducible cases can lead to a reproducible case too...)
BTW, while I definitely think that 'bug bounty' isn't as good as a company finding its own bugs, I wish ALL companies had an official way to report bugs. I'm a huge Tivo fan for example, but there are lots of reproducible issues in them.. and only recently did they start their official forum. (That's not the same as a bug reporting system, but I have used it as such.. and in fact have thought of starting a thread at the major *unofficial* Tivo discussion forum just to have links to known bugs written up on their official forum.)
Googled cheap cars.. The lowest end car is apparently the $12780 Nissan Versa. (I sure thought I've seen new cars even cheaper in dealer ads in the newspaper, but that was only me skimming, and I'm not 100% positive they were new.)
Over $12K "left over" from that thing, that looks much more like a motorcycle, compared to a 'regular car'.. that $12+K will buy a lot of gas.
(Yes, some people will pay extra for lots of things, like luxury cars.. and I am going to look into solar panels even though I think it won't make financial sense for me, though I also intend to get an electric car which may weigh it more in that direction.. But this sub-thread was about cheap/safe/legal transportation.)
but PCs have more flexibility than all of the rest put together
You say that as if it's a good thing, but it leads to fragmentation/not knowing what each machine supports, thus either being lowest common denominator (ticking off the people with 'powerful' machines), or having way more special code that you need to write and test on the various configurations.
If you're on a console, you know exactly what the console supports, and have far fewer extra things to support (Move/Kinect being the major one I can think of), and that's only if you want to put that support in.
Where did Voyager come into the discussion? He mentioned Star Trek II, one of, if not the, best Star Trek movie. (BTW, I think the vast vast vast majority of TV episodes of Trek, at LEAST TOS & TNG, and probably the others, are far better than any of the movies... even when the movies are good.)
I'm not purposely picking on two 'made up' bands/virtual bands, but they're the ones that came to mind first.. Yes, I know many of the Monkees songs were written by now incredibly well known songwriters, and I like some of their music and The Archies' big hit too.. But I still think it's analogous to the pop stuff of today.
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I don't remember if I own(ed - have a box of 2600 stuff somewhere) E.T., but I think Pac-Man on the 2600 was reasonable. It's fun.
Donkey Kong on the 2600 is the first time I remember being really disappointed by something I bought with my own money. $40 of paperboy money. (Wow, I'd never think of buying a $60 game nowadays, I always wait until they're about $20.. Lots of them I'm watching on Amazon go down to $15 routinely too.. Devil May Cry collection is $12.xy).
I agree with you, as long as I don't have to pay more social security, Medicare, etc., taxes to pay for these people who wasted their money on fancy cars when they were young instead of saving for retirement.
For *regular* people, I'd agree with you. For the already rich, I disagree. Adam Carolla has given various examples of collector cars going way way way up in value. I think he has even bought some JUST to sell them later at an appreciated value. (Yes, just like someone investing in stocks.)
If you need a car NOW, to commute, I'd suggest buying a used car. THEN, after you save some money, buy whatever you want (even if it's with a car loan, so you have some saved money to fall back on if necessary).
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
I have no idea what the price will be, but Tesla has had plans for years to release a new Roadster in the future.
http://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/tesla-plans-all-new-roadster
BTW, I don't have a Tesla and am unlikely to get one, at least for a few more generations, unless a used Roadster somehow becomes available REALLY cheap.
However, it was in the news a few days ago that the batteries are apparently lasting longer than was promised.
http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2013/07/tesla-roadster-batteries-stronger-than-expected-study.html
Wait, if you're recovering 10% of the heat, you're recovering 10% of the 50% 'wasted'. So you're really only 55% efficient in total.
I'm not sure what you're talking about here. Are you talking about watching movies on *commercial TV*? If so, then you should be watching the movies via other means (HBO, DVD/BluRay, streaming services), so they're without commercials. Plus, you're not seeing the ENTIRE movie if you watch it on a commercial channel. (1) It's edited for time, to make it fit (with 25-33% commercials) in a specific time slot, usually 2 hours. (2) It's edited for content. I admit some older folks probably appreciate this part.
You MIGHT be talking about product placement, but I sure don't think that counts as "full of terribly boring repetitive ads".
As for the original question, it seems to me like a RedBox is EASIER than any of these other solutions for an older person. "A vending machine that gives out movies" seems like an easy thing to explain.
Ya can't fool me, that involves RAY-DEE-AY-SHUN, we all dun found out that stuff is bad for ya.
We could certainly do with a lot fewer people saying it too.
Minor issue for developers maybe..
But what about the user? You can still buy(*) new phones running old versions of Android, and AFAIK, many of them will never get updates.
(*) I admit most of my knowledge on this comes from the CNET videos of phone reviews I see. TONS of the Android phone ones say "this still runs ", and only once in a while do they even mention that there will be an update available. (I am not inferring that if it's not mentioned, there WON'T be an update. I'm basing that part on real world examples of phones coming out and not ever being able to be updated officially.)
Wait, you're saying QA isn't writing bugs that have detailed steps to reproduce? If they are ones that can be easily reproduced, then they're not writing good bugs. (Obviously there are lots of bugs that are worth writing up that DON'T yet have reproducible cases yet.. sometimes a conglomeration of those not-reproducible cases can lead to a reproducible case too...)
BTW, while I definitely think that 'bug bounty' isn't as good as a company finding its own bugs, I wish ALL companies had an official way to report bugs. I'm a huge Tivo fan for example, but there are lots of reproducible issues in them.. and only recently did they start their official forum. (That's not the same as a bug reporting system, but I have used it as such.. and in fact have thought of starting a thread at the major *unofficial* Tivo discussion forum just to have links to known bugs written up on their official forum.)
*Some* insurance is mandatory. I don't need insurance to cover the cost of the car.
Googled cheap cars.. The lowest end car is apparently the $12780 Nissan Versa. (I sure thought I've seen new cars even cheaper in dealer ads in the newspaper, but that was only me skimming, and I'm not 100% positive they were new.)
Over $12K "left over" from that thing, that looks much more like a motorcycle, compared to a 'regular car'.. that $12+K will buy a lot of gas.
(Yes, some people will pay extra for lots of things, like luxury cars.. and I am going to look into solar panels even though I think it won't make financial sense for me, though I also intend to get an electric car which may weigh it more in that direction.. But this sub-thread was about cheap/safe/legal transportation.)
BTW, I haven't played it, but presumably it was popular, since it managed to get a sequel.
(In the various footage I've seen of the original & sequel, e.g. on GTTV, it looked somewhat fun... but maybe it's boring once one actually plays.)
You say that as if it's a good thing, but it leads to fragmentation/not knowing what each machine supports, thus either being lowest common denominator (ticking off the people with 'powerful' machines), or having way more special code that you need to write and test on the various configurations.
If you're on a console, you know exactly what the console supports, and have far fewer extra things to support (Move/Kinect being the major one I can think of), and that's only if you want to put that support in.
But this is discussing a *non*proprietary binary format.
Where did Voyager come into the discussion? He mentioned Star Trek II, one of, if not the, best Star Trek movie. (BTW, I think the vast vast vast majority of TV episodes of Trek, at LEAST TOS & TNG, and probably the others, are far better than any of the movies... even when the movies are good.)
I won't buy anything from Pepsi because they won't sell me Coke! WAAAAH.
Of course it's cooler... That's how it's being powered.
(But seriously, won't this thing "feel cold" in your hand? Do you really want to hold onto a cold flashlight continuously?)
The cloud is pure evil?
This web site and all web sites you use are "the cloud". Your mail server is "the cloud". Any remote machines you log into are "the cloud".
Apparently your return key is broken, however.
Says who?
According to
http://www.reference.com/motif/sports/average-commute-in-miles-for-americans
the average commute distance is 32 miles round trip. Even double that for side trips for shopping, and it's well within the distance of the lowest range stock electric cars.
(BTW, I do not yet have an electric car, but intend for my next car to be one.)
There was always "bad" pop music.
The Archies? The Monkees?
I'm not purposely picking on two 'made up' bands/virtual bands, but they're the ones that came to mind first.. Yes, I know many of the Monkees songs were written by now incredibly well known songwriters, and I like some of their music and The Archies' big hit too.. But I still think it's analogous to the pop stuff of today.