I say that instead of a space elevator, we get to work on building a space exhaust pipe. Just like the elevator, but the cable is hollow and allows us to pump all this nasty CO2 out into space!
Am I wrong in thinking that the athletes are suppposed to be amateurs - i.e. not paid professional sports people?
That used to be true quite a few years ago, but today it is not. The only amatuers in the Olympics are in the unpopular (as in "don't rake in the big advertising revenues" or "don't have a league with amazingly over-paid participants") sports.
Not that all events will benefit from high-tech - take Torvil & Dean and their ice-dances, for instance.
True, but we're talking sports here, not the ice-capades. When in doubt, use this handy rule: does the outcome of the event entirely depend on the opinion(s) of one or more judges? If yes, it is not a sport, merely a competition.
Yes, you can race legally. But your insurance company is likely to -increase- your rates to cover non-standard useage of that vehicle (racing!), rather than give you a discount. I know that my friends who race occasionaly have to get extra coverage for the track, and it's not cheap.
I have seen a trend lately (in Canada) where a merchant who used to accept Interac now has a white-label ATM instead. This is mostly in resturaunts and bars, but I fear that the trend will extend to other merchants in the near future. I think one of the worst parts of this is that you have no idea how much the extra fee will be until you punch in all your info and get to the last screen that tells you "an additional $x.xx will be charged for this transaction". Not to mention that I use Interac so I don't have to carry cash around, and now I need to withdraw cash, and end up carrying around the loose change after the purchase. No thanks, ring it up on the credit card and make the merchant eat the processing fee.
Related to this, I found one place which still accepted Interac payments, but before you punched in your PIN and accepted the charges, you would get notified that there was an additional 50 cent charge for this transaction (which is on top of any charges your bank might have.) You could choose to accept it or decline it (and cancel the transaction.) I choose to cancel, and made them ring it up on my credit card instead (which ends up costing them money instead of costing me money...)
Some of those self-checkout machines at the supermarket are a LOT harder to use than others. I came across the worst example recently...
I kid you not, to check out at this thing, you must:
- Place your items on a "shelf" on one side of the machine. - Tell the machine how many grocery bags you will use (how the hell am I supposed to know this BEFORE I pack everything?) - Put one of your bags on a "filling rack" on the other side of the machine. Not putting the bag in this rack causes the system to not allow you to proceed. (For example, you only have 3 items, and decide to just hold the bag in one hand and fill it... not allowed here.) - Take each item from the "shelf", scan it, verify that the right thing was scanned, and place the item in the bag on the "filling rack." Failure to place the item in the bag on the rack causes the system to not allow you to proceed. - The "shelf" and the "filling rack" have scales in them. If your incoming and outgoing weights are different, the system will not allow you to proceed. - If you use your last bag (remember, you had to tell it how many bags you were going to use) and remove it from the "filling rack", the system will not allow you to scan in any more items. You can not simply tell it to give you another bag.
The whole system is basically set up to catch you stealing something. It is not set up to actually be a convinient way to check out. I used it once, and I will never use it again. What a serious PITA!
I now go to a store with a cashier that scans my items and takes my money, and a bagger who packs my groceries and carries them to my car. It's worth the extra $5 or so for the weekly grocery run.
How do you go about dealing with customs yourself? The big shipping companies have never let me do that. (Well, UPS would let me use my own brokerage service, but there was a $25 charge to send them the paperwork!)
I think the customer service hassles when dealing with customs is part of it too. I know that I've been more than a bit pissed off in the past when I paid a hefty sum for shipping, and then got nailed for 2X the shipping cost for brokerage fees by UPS or FedEx Ground.
I imagine that a lot of customers end up bitching out the company they bought the product from, or even refusing to accept the delivery due to the extra fees. It just might not be worth it.
The smarter companies parter with a place like BorderFree.com that specializes in dealing with Canadian customs.
Another thing to consider is that a lot of electronics bought from US stores do not have a warranty in Canada. The super-cheap electronics places in town used to specialize in these "grey market" items. Not illegal to buy them, but if it ever breaks, good luck getting it fixed.
(BTW, if you ever have the choice, pick FedEx Express or USPS for shipping to Canada. Never use UPS or FedEx Ground. While you might think you are saving some money, you get shafted by brokerage fees once the item gets to the border. UPS will hold your package hostage until you pay the fees, and FedEx ground will deliver the package and hit you with a letter demanding the fees up to a month later.)
But not nearly as much fun... I mean, if suddenly I get the urge to session some street, maybe hit a stair gap or two, I want that full suspension bike under me.
Plus after spending $2k on the alumininum, fully suspended, knobby-tired mountain bike, I don't have the cash for another bike just for road riding:-)
Come on, why has no-one figured this out yet? Cancer? That means radiation-therapy. Super athlentic skills after radiation exposure? The guy is obviously a super-hero mutant after his cancer treatments!
Don't forget to add $25-$50 for shipping, a remote control and IR reciever (or a keyboard and mouse and some long cables), and taxes.
And for MPEG-2 encoders, I was thinking of hardware based encoders (like the TiVO has), not TV-capture cards that do everything in software.
If you want to use a software encoder, you could probably take the $80 encoder and $60 video card and combine them in a cheaper all-in-one card. Heck, you can probably get an all-in-one that also has a remote, and save some cost there too.
It can't be done. You can't build a decent Myth box for $310. The MPEG-2 encoder alone is $100.
You can build a MythTV front-end for that price easily, but not one that records shows.
You can build a solid MythTV box for around $500 if you shop around. Anything less than $500 and you are using pizza boxes and duct tape, or used equipment.
Some banks do, some banks don't. Most banks will let you deposit for free, but might charge a small amount to withdraw from the ATM, or pay a bill. Most banks have monthly plans, for around $10, that will let you have a certain number of transactions during the month. And they will usually waive that fee if you keep a minimum ($1000, $2000) balance.
For my $10/month, I get free deposits at any branch (ATM or in person), free direct-deposit for my paycheque, 30 transactions (ATM, in-person, bill payments online or in branch, transfers to other accounts, cheques, etc.), cheques when I need them, a monthly statement, a really nice web-banking system, a phone-banking system, and a couple of other things. If I keep a minimum balance of $2k, they don't charge me the $10. I can get all of that for something like $6 if I want to cut back on the number of transactions each month, and then they charge me $.35 per transaction when I go over my limit.
All in all, not a bad deal. Some banks offer most of that for free. Some charge more, some charge less. I keep my bank because they are open until 8PM most nights, and until 5PM on Saturdays, which is sure handy when I actually need to go in and talk with someone.
Well, get used to the idea that you won't be seeing the Saturn V anymore, just a huge, generic looking warehouse. That's what they did to the Saturn V at Kennedy. The building is just -barely- bigger than the Saturn V, so you can't even see the whole thing at once. But you do get a really nice look at the spectacular restoration on smaller (ha!) sections up-close. I just wish they would have made the building about 50% longer and wider. Oh, and eliminated the 37 gift-shops inside. Yikes.
The problem isn't the remote (although the Harmony remotes are probably the best ones yet to deal with the "wrong mode" issues), but with the components. They can't talk to each other.
The culprit is the consumer electronics industry. They have simply refuesed to work together to create any sort of communications standard. But they are slowly being forced to work with existing computer and network standards, and that is a good thing.
If your DVD player could hook into the rest of your components (TV, stereo, home lighting, etc.), then when you hit "play DVD" on your remote, the DVD player would take care of coordinating the rest of the devices. This is what "convergence" should get us.
Right now, your poor IR remote has to try and coordinate all of these devices, but the devices don't play nicely at all. There is no way for you remote to know that the stereo isn't turned on, or that the TV is set to the wrong video input. (Again, the Harmony remotes really help out here, but it's not fully automated or fool proof by any means.)
I really wish I could have "Girder" for all of my home theatre components...
$140. If I were to do it again, I would just buy one of the pre-made units that pretty much use the exact same components that I bought and assembled myself. I would have saved about 20 hours of my time, and it would have only cost me $10 more.
This movie was meant to be seen in 3D. Watch it again some time and notice just how many times something comes flying right at the screen or pokes out at you.
A friend SWEARS that he saw a pre-release/test screening of Raiders in 3D when he lived in Albuquerque. Watching the movie again, imagining that it was supposed to be in 3D, I kinda believe him.
Ahhh, but how long does it take to get up to 130MPH? My 1971 VW, with it's insanely powerful 55hp engine and stupendous areodynamics, can hit 95 to 100MPH in about 3 minutes. On a flat road. With a tail wind. On a cool day. Did I mention the tail wind?
Kids, don't try this at home. A VW Beetle does an amazing airplane wing impression at this speed.
I could do that on my 1976 Honda Civic. Pop the hood, and start pulling spark plug wires off. It would continue to run on a single cylinder, although it didn't have much power.
I'm sure they've smoothed out a few of the problems with my technique, though.
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I say that instead of a space elevator, we get to work on building a space exhaust pipe. Just like the elevator, but the cable is hollow and allows us to pump all this nasty CO2 out into space!
Only two? Are you sure? Last time I checked, there were three.
That used to be true quite a few years ago, but today it is not. The only amatuers in the Olympics are in the unpopular (as in "don't rake in the big advertising revenues" or "don't have a league with amazingly over-paid participants") sports.
True, but we're talking sports here, not the ice-capades. When in doubt, use this handy rule: does the outcome of the event entirely depend on the opinion(s) of one or more judges? If yes, it is not a sport, merely a competition.
Yes, you can race legally. But your insurance company is likely to -increase- your rates to cover non-standard useage of that vehicle (racing!), rather than give you a discount. I know that my friends who race occasionaly have to get extra coverage for the track, and it's not cheap.
If someone is racing their car on the weekend, I'm betting that the insurance company isn't going to want to give them a discount...
Wow, a kick-ass assault vehicle AND it's eco-friendly? Who would have thought that Batman would be driving a turbine-powered Prius on steroids?
Not true. The RCA Scenium PVRs (or DMRs as RCA calls them) work just fine with analog cable in Canada. It uses the Guide Plus+ system for scheduling.
If you are a roll-your-own type, SageTV, Snapstream BeyondTV, and MythTV all support Canadian listings. These use the Zap2It service.
Of these, SageTV is probably the most TiVO-like, as it will suggest new shows that you might like. The others don't do this.
I have seen a trend lately (in Canada) where a merchant who used to accept Interac now has a white-label ATM instead. This is mostly in resturaunts and bars, but I fear that the trend will extend to other merchants in the near future. I think one of the worst parts of this is that you have no idea how much the extra fee will be until you punch in all your info and get to the last screen that tells you "an additional $x.xx will be charged for this transaction". Not to mention that I use Interac so I don't have to carry cash around, and now I need to withdraw cash, and end up carrying around the loose change after the purchase. No thanks, ring it up on the credit card and make the merchant eat the processing fee.
Related to this, I found one place which still accepted Interac payments, but before you punched in your PIN and accepted the charges, you would get notified that there was an additional 50 cent charge for this transaction (which is on top of any charges your bank might have.) You could choose to accept it or decline it (and cancel the transaction.) I choose to cancel, and made them ring it up on my credit card instead (which ends up costing them money instead of costing me money...)
Some of those self-checkout machines at the supermarket are a LOT harder to use than others. I came across the worst example recently...
I kid you not, to check out at this thing, you must:
- Place your items on a "shelf" on one side of the machine.
- Tell the machine how many grocery bags you will use (how the hell am I supposed to know this BEFORE I pack everything?)
- Put one of your bags on a "filling rack" on the other side of the machine. Not putting the bag in this rack causes the system to not allow you to proceed. (For example, you only have 3 items, and decide to just hold the bag in one hand and fill it... not allowed here.)
- Take each item from the "shelf", scan it, verify that the right thing was scanned, and place the item in the bag on the "filling rack." Failure to place the item in the bag on the rack causes the system to not allow you to proceed.
- The "shelf" and the "filling rack" have scales in them. If your incoming and outgoing weights are different, the system will not allow you to proceed.
- If you use your last bag (remember, you had to tell it how many bags you were going to use) and remove it from the "filling rack", the system will not allow you to scan in any more items. You can not simply tell it to give you another bag.
The whole system is basically set up to catch you stealing something. It is not set up to actually be a convinient way to check out. I used it once, and I will never use it again. What a serious PITA!
I now go to a store with a cashier that scans my items and takes my money, and a bagger who packs my groceries and carries them to my car. It's worth the extra $5 or so for the weekly grocery run.
How do you go about dealing with customs yourself? The big shipping companies have never let me do that. (Well, UPS would let me use my own brokerage service, but there was a $25 charge to send them the paperwork!)
I think the customer service hassles when dealing with customs is part of it too. I know that I've been more than a bit pissed off in the past when I paid a hefty sum for shipping, and then got nailed for 2X the shipping cost for brokerage fees by UPS or FedEx Ground.
I imagine that a lot of customers end up bitching out the company they bought the product from, or even refusing to accept the delivery due to the extra fees. It just might not be worth it.
The smarter companies parter with a place like BorderFree.com that specializes in dealing with Canadian customs.
Another thing to consider is that a lot of electronics bought from US stores do not have a warranty in Canada. The super-cheap electronics places in town used to specialize in these "grey market" items. Not illegal to buy them, but if it ever breaks, good luck getting it fixed.
(BTW, if you ever have the choice, pick FedEx Express or USPS for shipping to Canada. Never use UPS or FedEx Ground. While you might think you are saving some money, you get shafted by brokerage fees once the item gets to the border. UPS will hold your package hostage until you pay the fees, and FedEx ground will deliver the package and hit you with a letter demanding the fees up to a month later.)
But the TV in this thing is not a stripped down unit, it is a whole TV set, little legs and everything!
But not nearly as much fun... I mean, if suddenly I get the urge to session some street, maybe hit a stair gap or two, I want that full suspension bike under me.
:-)
Plus after spending $2k on the alumininum, fully suspended, knobby-tired mountain bike, I don't have the cash for another bike just for road riding
It's not always about getting there fast...
Come on, why has no-one figured this out yet? Cancer? That means radiation-therapy. Super athlentic skills after radiation exposure? The guy is obviously a super-hero mutant after his cancer treatments!
It's the only plausible explanation.
Don't forget to add $25-$50 for shipping, a remote control and IR reciever (or a keyboard and mouse and some long cables), and taxes.
And for MPEG-2 encoders, I was thinking of hardware based encoders (like the TiVO has), not TV-capture cards that do everything in software.
If you want to use a software encoder, you could probably take the $80 encoder and $60 video card and combine them in a cheaper all-in-one card. Heck, you can probably get an all-in-one that also has a remote, and save some cost there too.
It can't be done. You can't build a decent Myth box for $310. The MPEG-2 encoder alone is $100.
You can build a MythTV front-end for that price easily, but not one that records shows.
You can build a solid MythTV box for around $500 if you shop around. Anything less than $500 and you are using pizza boxes and duct tape, or used equipment.
Some banks do, some banks don't. Most banks will let you deposit for free, but might charge a small amount to withdraw from the ATM, or pay a bill. Most banks have monthly plans, for around $10, that will let you have a certain number of transactions during the month. And they will usually waive that fee if you keep a minimum ($1000, $2000) balance.
For my $10/month, I get free deposits at any branch (ATM or in person), free direct-deposit for my paycheque, 30 transactions (ATM, in-person, bill payments online or in branch, transfers to other accounts, cheques, etc.), cheques when I need them, a monthly statement, a really nice web-banking system, a phone-banking system, and a couple of other things. If I keep a minimum balance of $2k, they don't charge me the $10. I can get all of that for something like $6 if I want to cut back on the number of transactions each month, and then they charge me $.35 per transaction when I go over my limit.
All in all, not a bad deal. Some banks offer most of that for free. Some charge more, some charge less. I keep my bank because they are open until 8PM most nights, and until 5PM on Saturdays, which is sure handy when I actually need to go in and talk with someone.
Well, get used to the idea that you won't be seeing the Saturn V anymore, just a huge, generic looking warehouse. That's what they did to the Saturn V at Kennedy. The building is just -barely- bigger than the Saturn V, so you can't even see the whole thing at once. But you do get a really nice look at the spectacular restoration on smaller (ha!) sections up-close. I just wish they would have made the building about 50% longer and wider. Oh, and eliminated the 37 gift-shops inside. Yikes.
The problem isn't the remote (although the Harmony remotes are probably the best ones yet to deal with the "wrong mode" issues), but with the components. They can't talk to each other.
The culprit is the consumer electronics industry. They have simply refuesed to work together to create any sort of communications standard. But they are slowly being forced to work with existing computer and network standards, and that is a good thing.
If your DVD player could hook into the rest of your components (TV, stereo, home lighting, etc.), then when you hit "play DVD" on your remote, the DVD player would take care of coordinating the rest of the devices. This is what "convergence" should get us.
Right now, your poor IR remote has to try and coordinate all of these devices, but the devices don't play nicely at all. There is no way for you remote to know that the stereo isn't turned on, or that the TV is set to the wrong video input. (Again, the Harmony remotes really help out here, but it's not fully automated or fool proof by any means.)
I really wish I could have "Girder" for all of my home theatre components...
Gads, everyone knows that Santa Claus lives in Canada, postal code H0H-0H0. The North Pole is in Canada, where else would he reside?
Would the one exception be Milton Keynes?
I built my own control panel a few years back, and it costs some serious money and time to do it right.
Let's see:
2 8-way joysticks : 30
18 push buttons : 32
1 1/8" drill bit : 7
1/2 sheet melamine: 12
Melamine edging : 5
Melamine saw blade: 8
iPac kybd encoder : 43
Piano hinge : 2
Wire : free
Misc. hardware : 1
-----------------------
Total : $140
$140. If I were to do it again, I would just buy one of the pre-made units that pretty much use the exact same components that I bought and assembled myself. I would have saved about 20 hours of my time, and it would have only cost me $10 more.
Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark.
This movie was meant to be seen in 3D. Watch it again some time and notice just how many times something comes flying right at the screen or pokes out at you.
A friend SWEARS that he saw a pre-release/test screening of Raiders in 3D when he lived in Albuquerque. Watching the movie again, imagining that it was supposed to be in 3D, I kinda believe him.
Ahhh, but how long does it take to get up to 130MPH? My 1971 VW, with it's insanely powerful 55hp engine and stupendous areodynamics, can hit 95 to 100MPH in about 3 minutes. On a flat road. With a tail wind. On a cool day. Did I mention the tail wind?
Kids, don't try this at home. A VW Beetle does an amazing airplane wing impression at this speed.
I could do that on my 1976 Honda Civic. Pop the hood, and start pulling spark plug wires off. It would continue to run on a single cylinder, although it didn't have much power.
I'm sure they've smoothed out a few of the problems with my technique, though.