Up here in Canadia we don't have Tivo, but we do have PVRs and lord do they suck.
Depending on the carrier you chose, you're locked to a specific model (which costs 500$) with an interface circa 1995. It's slow as molasses to navigate and they don't all offer a lot of functionality (why doesn't my Videotron model allow me to hide channels that I'm not subscribed to?) and the interface is ugly as hell. For some reason (I suspect forced replacement), those devices also corrupt the HD after a few years of use and cannot be upgraded.
I can chose between 125+ different DVD players but I can't chose the device to watch tv with? Why is that?
Seriously though, if that was a reason to not use his service we'd have to stop drinking, using body products, going on vacation, buying motorcycles, buying magazines, tuning cars, etc.
The rest of your points seem perfectly valid though.
Frankly, I prefer paying higher taxes as they are spread out over the year. Since income tax is taken directly from my paycheck I don't even notice them, I just do my budget with what actually gets deposited in my account.
Yes, we pay a lot of taxes, but I prefer that than receiving the 25000$ bill for my deviated septum surgery. To be honest, I don't even know what the surgery cost but I do know that now I sleep better, I no longer have constant headaches and the wife is happy that my snoring is done and over with.
This being a "convenience" surgery means that no insurance would have covered it and since I didn't have the cash to pay, I would have had to live with the condition...
Good health should be a right, not a priviledge. Is the Canadian system perfect? Hell no (18 hours of waiting at the emergency ain't too great), but I prefer getting treated eventually than not at all or go bankrupt.
Dangerous perhaps, but if there's a chance we can get Fantastic 4 like powers when it happens then I'm in... well, unless I could turn into the Thing and that would just suck http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20050304/#n629.
Although I have to admit that the technology does have a cool factor, I fail to see its usefulness in the wars fought by the US today.
Back in WWII, both sides were bombing the crap out of eachother with little to no regard to civilian casualties. In a case like this, this invention could be quite useful. But let's look at the wars that the US is fighting now:
-War on drugs: So when's the last time Pablo Escobar directed artillery or missiles towards US troops or population?
-War on terror: The ennemy doesn't have missiles either... this laser thing's useless against soldiers and IEDs.
If you insist of putting that cash into the war machine, then it could be spent on finding better ways to detect or protect against improvised explosive devices.
This is just propaganda to dissuade others from using missiles against us. Instead on working on tech to stop missile attacks, why don't you work on fixing the reasons why the ennemy wants to send a missile towards you in the first place?
because there really is no story left to tell after the destruction of the second Death Star and the death of the Emperor
You've obviously never read some of the expanded universe novels spanning the period after episode VI. Timothy Zahn and others managed to craft some really good stories in the post Episode VI universe.
1)Politician passes hated law 2)People complain 3)Politician does 180 and says he will get law retracted after the elections 4)Politician gets re-elected 5)Profit?
I agree with you for everything except #2. RWD in winter time is fun at the begining but it gets real old, real fast.
I drove my mom's RWD Mercedes for a while during winter and really disliked having to correct when steering whenever I took a turn a bit too sharply (like at an intersection) and also getting out of an icy parallel parking spot was nigh impossible (I never had that problem with a FWD).
I currently have a 1999 Saab 9-3 and I love the car. For a mere 6000$CAD I got a lot of room, leather interior, sunroof, car computer, heated seats (will never buy a car without those ever again), comfort, reliability, fuel efficiency (relatively speaking) and power.
People always thought my Saab looked weird with it's hatch-back, I was quite surprised to see the new Honda Accord hatch, it has the same lines as my 10 year old car!
OK, I just had to jump in here. I'm tired of the people who say "Switch to linux and the spam/virus/worm problem will be solved!". It wouldn't solve sh*t! The spammers and virus/worm makers would just develop for the new platform, and the only reason that Linux is so secure is that the malware devs aren't developping payloads that attack it.
You have to keep in mind that these numbers mean absolutely nothing.
If company A spent 100$/client to bring you service X and company B spent 75$/client to bring you the same X, it just means that one of them got a better deal.
Conversely, if company A spent 100$/client and brought you service X and company B spent 100$/client to bring you service Y (which is half as good as X) it just means that they both spent the same amount of cash.
And again, just because someone spends more on you, it doesn't mean that it's necessarily better. In Quebec for example, our govn't typically spends 35% more on road repairs than our neighbors, yet our roads still suck.
Which begs the question: Why do terrorists insist on blowing up airplanes?
If my goal was to instill fear and a high body count, I'd just wear an explosive ladden vest and sit in the first car of the longest passenger train that I can find OR wrap said explosives in nails and wait in line at a concert OR ride a ferry OR catch the premiere of a blockbuster movie/opera/theatrical production in the largest theater that I can find and the list goes on...
Sure, the security theater that's going on now isn't doing anything to curb terrorism but even if it did, it's safe to assume that they would simply change targets.
I'm having a hard time figuring out what types of games you could actually play with this... With the Wii, the controller isn't just something for the machine to track, the buttons on the controller are still used to send some input.
How will you play bowling with Natal? How wil it know that you've let go of the ball? The same applies for football, frisbee, baseball, etc.
How will you shoot something? Is it precise enough to track your trigger finger? Precise enough to calculate where you're aiming?
Maybe I lack vision, but except for dancing or music games, I don't see much practical application of a 100% controller free system.
Although I'll admit that this would bring us one step closer to a Holodeck.
I'm assuming that this is a pretty old patent, so what seems obvious now because it is mainstream wasn't obvious at all when it came out (before we had digital cameras for instance).
Being able to see your picture on a screen before pressing a button and taking it was a pretty innovative concept and that's why Kodak patented it. Kodak invented the concept, they didn't take something existing (like the breathing example another poster gave) and then patented it.
All the other phone makers licensed the tech, why shouldn't RIM and Apple?
Well, then this confirms that this service would cost me a fortune if I'm planning on watching one movie a day (which is what my gf home on sick leave does). In Quebec, "decent" high speed internet comes with a cap of 30gigs up/down on which a 50$ fee is added if that cap is busted. That's on top of the roughly 60$/month it costs me now. So unless I stop using my internet exept for streaming movies then I'd have to upgrade my service to the 90$/month version.
Although I mostly agree with you, there's one product that makes NO sense and simply exists to make money off of gullible parents: the Prenatal education system.
The makers of the BabyPlus Prenatal Education System claim that their device, which emits a sounds similar to the mom's heartbeat [...]
So here we have a device that emits a sound similar to the mom's heartbeat for a baby which is in the womb... in the mom... close to her actual heart.
That's like listening to a song on a radio while wearing headphones which belt out the same song but not synched to the one on the radio.
The only way this makes sense is if the mom is dead or a zombie. Either way, you have bigger issues to worry about than "educating" your unborn child.
The memory issue worries me as well, much memory can streaming a non-hd movie take? Also, my internets here are pretty limited in terms of bandwith so how much juice would downloading/streaming one movie per day take?
I currently get my dvd's in the mail so I'm curious if the move to digital media would be worthwhile.
I'm with you on this, the technology does have it's uses:
Being able to send video AND audio wirelessly to your tv via your laptop is pretty neat.
I was thinking of hooking up my laptop to my tv but having one video cable hanging next to my pvr or console when not in use didn't appeal to me. Also, the thought of having to plug another cable from my headphone jack to the stereo in order to get pretty average sound wasn't terribly exciting either.
And no, I don't have a laptop with an HDMI plug which would do both and no I don't want to buy a new laptop just for the few times when I want to plug it into the tv.
Instead of working on a new kind of peripheral which will probably not catch on for quite a while, if ever, why don't you finish god damned Half-Life 2 Episode 3!!!!!
Even with the terrorist attacks, air travel is the safest form of transportation on the planet.
More people die in car crashes than in terrorist attacks, so why not use all of those gazillions of dollars to find ways to make cars safer?
Soon we'll have to strip naked to take a flight to make sure we're not carrying explosives, but nothing is preventing anyone from driving completely blitzed. On the latter, even getting caught isn't much of a deterrent, up here (Quebec) we have people who are caught driving completely plowed 6+ times and the penalties aren't doing squat.
Slashdot Mirror
Up here in Canadia we don't have Tivo, but we do have PVRs and lord do they suck.
Depending on the carrier you chose, you're locked to a specific model (which costs 500$) with an interface circa 1995. It's slow as molasses to navigate and they don't all offer a lot of functionality (why doesn't my Videotron model allow me to hide channels that I'm not subscribed to?) and the interface is ugly as hell. For some reason (I suspect forced replacement), those devices also corrupt the HD after a few years of use and cannot be upgraded.
I can chose between 125+ different DVD players but I can't chose the device to watch tv with? Why is that?
He uses women's bodies to advertise
And this is a bad thing?
Seriously though, if that was a reason to not use his service we'd have to stop drinking, using body products, going on vacation, buying motorcycles, buying magazines, tuning cars, etc.
The rest of your points seem perfectly valid though.
Agreed.
By that logic, they should be suing electric companies as well because criminals use their service to grow/cook drugs.
Frankly, I prefer paying higher taxes as they are spread out over the year. Since income tax is taken directly from my paycheck I don't even notice them, I just do my budget with what actually gets deposited in my account.
Yes, we pay a lot of taxes, but I prefer that than receiving the 25000$ bill for my deviated septum surgery. To be honest, I don't even know what the surgery cost but I do know that now I sleep better, I no longer have constant headaches and the wife is happy that my snoring is done and over with.
This being a "convenience" surgery means that no insurance would have covered it and since I didn't have the cash to pay, I would have had to live with the condition...
Good health should be a right, not a priviledge. Is the Canadian system perfect? Hell no (18 hours of waiting at the emergency ain't too great), but I prefer getting treated eventually than not at all or go bankrupt.
Dangerous perhaps, but if there's a chance we can get Fantastic 4 like powers when it happens then I'm in... well, unless I could turn into the Thing and that would just suck http://www.cad-comic.com/cad/20050304/#n629.
Although I have to admit that the technology does have a cool factor, I fail to see its usefulness in the wars fought by the US today.
Back in WWII, both sides were bombing the crap out of eachother with little to no regard to civilian casualties. In a case like this, this invention could be quite useful. But let's look at the wars that the US is fighting now:
-War on drugs: So when's the last time Pablo Escobar directed artillery or missiles towards US troops or population?
-War on terror: The ennemy doesn't have missiles either... this laser thing's useless against soldiers and IEDs.
If you insist of putting that cash into the war machine, then it could be spent on finding better ways to detect or protect against improvised explosive devices.
This is just propaganda to dissuade others from using missiles against us. Instead on working on tech to stop missile attacks, why don't you work on fixing the reasons why the ennemy wants to send a missile towards you in the first place?
because there really is no story left to tell after the destruction of the second Death Star and the death of the Emperor
You've obviously never read some of the expanded universe novels spanning the period after episode VI. Timothy Zahn and others managed to craft some really good stories in the post Episode VI universe.
Official answer:
Cuz they're sponsored by Volkswagen and cuz the car has built in many of the electronic sensors and devices that they need.
Short answer:
Cuz they can and cuz an Audi TTS is hella cooler than an Aries.
So...
1)Politician passes hated law
2)People complain
3)Politician does 180 and says he will get law retracted after the elections
4)Politician gets re-elected
5)Profit?
I agree with you for everything except #2. RWD in winter time is fun at the begining but it gets real old, real fast.
I drove my mom's RWD Mercedes for a while during winter and really disliked having to correct when steering whenever I took a turn a bit too sharply (like at an intersection) and also getting out of an icy parallel parking spot was nigh impossible (I never had that problem with a FWD).
I currently have a 1999 Saab 9-3 and I love the car. For a mere 6000$CAD I got a lot of room, leather interior, sunroof, car computer, heated seats (will never buy a car without those ever again), comfort, reliability, fuel efficiency (relatively speaking) and power.
People always thought my Saab looked weird with it's hatch-back, I was quite surprised to see the new Honda Accord hatch, it has the same lines as my 10 year old car!
OK, I just had to jump in here. I'm tired of the people who say "Switch to linux and the spam/virus/worm problem will be solved!". It wouldn't solve sh*t! The spammers and virus/worm makers would just develop for the new platform, and the only reason that Linux is so secure is that the malware devs aren't developping payloads that attack it.
Thanks, I didn't realize that bilingual asphalt was more expensive than unilingual asphalt...
You have to keep in mind that these numbers mean absolutely nothing.
If company A spent 100$/client to bring you service X and company B spent 75$/client to bring you the same X, it just means that one of them got a better deal.
Conversely, if company A spent 100$/client and brought you service X and company B spent 100$/client to bring you service Y (which is half as good as X) it just means that they both spent the same amount of cash.
And again, just because someone spends more on you, it doesn't mean that it's necessarily better. In Quebec for example, our govn't typically spends 35% more on road repairs than our neighbors, yet our roads still suck.
Too many cables?
Part 1
Part 2
Relax, they were just using company ressources to make sure their wives weren't having an affair.
Arnie did it in True Lies and it all worked out in the end.
Silly spaceballs and their ludacris speed foiling our scientists and their methods
They've gone bling!
I think I'll just drive or take Amtrak.
Which begs the question: Why do terrorists insist on blowing up airplanes?
If my goal was to instill fear and a high body count, I'd just wear an explosive ladden vest and sit in the first car of the longest passenger train that I can find OR wrap said explosives in nails and wait in line at a concert OR ride a ferry OR catch the premiere of a blockbuster movie/opera/theatrical production in the largest theater that I can find and the list goes on...
Sure, the security theater that's going on now isn't doing anything to curb terrorism but even if it did, it's safe to assume that they would simply change targets.
I'm having a hard time figuring out what types of games you could actually play with this... With the Wii, the controller isn't just something for the machine to track, the buttons on the controller are still used to send some input.
How will you play bowling with Natal? How wil it know that you've let go of the ball? The same applies for football, frisbee, baseball, etc.
How will you shoot something? Is it precise enough to track your trigger finger? Precise enough to calculate where you're aiming?
Maybe I lack vision, but except for dancing or music games, I don't see much practical application of a 100% controller free system.
Although I'll admit that this would bring us one step closer to a Holodeck.
I'm assuming that this is a pretty old patent, so what seems obvious now because it is mainstream wasn't obvious at all when it came out (before we had digital cameras for instance).
Being able to see your picture on a screen before pressing a button and taking it was a pretty innovative concept and that's why Kodak patented it. Kodak invented the concept, they didn't take something existing (like the breathing example another poster gave) and then patented it.
All the other phone makers licensed the tech, why shouldn't RIM and Apple?
Ah, thanks for the info!
Well, then this confirms that this service would cost me a fortune if I'm planning on watching one movie a day (which is what my gf home on sick leave does). In Quebec, "decent" high speed internet comes with a cap of 30gigs up/down on which a 50$ fee is added if that cap is busted. That's on top of the roughly 60$/month it costs me now. So unless I stop using my internet exept for streaming movies then I'd have to upgrade my service to the 90$/month version.
I'll stick with movies in the mail, thanks.
Although I mostly agree with you, there's one product that makes NO sense and simply exists to make money off of gullible parents: the Prenatal education system.
The makers of the BabyPlus Prenatal Education System claim that their device, which emits a sounds similar to the mom's heartbeat [...]
So here we have a device that emits a sound similar to the mom's heartbeat for a baby which is in the womb... in the mom... close to her actual heart.
That's like listening to a song on a radio while wearing headphones which belt out the same song but not synched to the one on the radio.
The only way this makes sense is if the mom is dead or a zombie. Either way, you have bigger issues to worry about than "educating" your unborn child.
The memory issue worries me as well, much memory can streaming a non-hd movie take? Also, my internets here are pretty limited in terms of bandwith so how much juice would downloading/streaming one movie per day take?
I currently get my dvd's in the mail so I'm curious if the move to digital media would be worthwhile.
I'm with you on this, the technology does have it's uses:
Being able to send video AND audio wirelessly to your tv via your laptop is pretty neat.
I was thinking of hooking up my laptop to my tv but having one video cable hanging next to my pvr or console when not in use didn't appeal to me. Also, the thought of having to plug another cable from my headphone jack to the stereo in order to get pretty average sound wasn't terribly exciting either.
And no, I don't have a laptop with an HDMI plug which would do both and no I don't want to buy a new laptop just for the few times when I want to plug it into the tv.
Instead of working on a new kind of peripheral which will probably not catch on for quite a while, if ever, why don't you finish god damned Half-Life 2 Episode 3!!!!!
Even with the terrorist attacks, air travel is the safest form of transportation on the planet.
More people die in car crashes than in terrorist attacks, so why not use all of those gazillions of dollars to find ways to make cars safer?
Soon we'll have to strip naked to take a flight to make sure we're not carrying explosives, but nothing is preventing anyone from driving completely blitzed. On the latter, even getting caught isn't much of a deterrent, up here (Quebec) we have people who are caught driving completely plowed 6+ times and the penalties aren't doing squat.