"The researchers were able to teleport three distinct polarisation states between Alice and Bob via the fibre-optic cable through the tunnel. The process is not instantaneous as it is limited by the speed of light."
Doesn't sound like teleporting to me so much as uploading.
Then again, I'm just grasping at straws hoping to get Canada its first gold medal in first non-anonymous post to have quoted an article done by a member without a Slashdot subscription.
Isn't this the scenario that Ayn Rand dreamed about? A company that's achieved the ultimate in efficiency now making huge volumes of sales as a reward because no one can become more efficient than them and make a cheaper product?
Actually, someone will but they'll cut even more corners to do that and humorous customer stories of Apex's power buttons falling off will become "Remember when things weren't that bad?" tales of the past.
Maybe I'm slippery sloping but things already are pretty crappy in terms of low-end DVD players.
That's because the cost of oil and highway/air infrastructure are subsidized by taxpayers already to make the cost of the item only appear cheaper.
Factor in the costs of road/airport maintenance and building, land clearing, emergency funds for things such as oil spills and trucking accidents, political costs associated with maintaining a reasonable oil price, lowered tariffs, and later dollar-value loss from free trade and the prices at your local Best Buy might not feel so cheap.
I liked Dragon's Lair.. then I liked Dragon's Lair II (the level with the piano playing was fantastic).
Nowadays, I like Dance Dance Revolution. All pretty much the same interface (except Dragon's Lair didn't have any moves where you had to hold the joystick/sword button down for a long period of time if I'm remembering right).
The day someone can combine the fitness involved in DDR with a game that looks like Dragon's Lair, I'll be there too:)
I'd be happy if games came out with 30+ hours of real game time period. Most of the games with hours of gameplay numbering higher seem to consist of one of the following elements that don't take much more effort from a programming/design standpoint:
Find X packages, markers, dogs, cats, gerbils, etc. (GTA III/VC, Kingdom Hearts, Banjo-Kazooie, countless others)
Slow down walking speed to a crawl to make the game world feel larger (Elder Scrolls III)
Get an ability at one end of the map that you have to use at the opposite end to get past the place that wasn't passable before (the Metroids, Donkey Kong 64, Metal Gear)
Create artificially difficult RPG bosses which require dozens of hours of fighting in order to get strong enough to beat/unlock (Final Fantasy secret bosses)
Unlocking secret levels which require abilities that only the 99.999th percentile of gamers have (Super Monkey Ball's master levels)
Hunting down items/monsters that drop/appear randomly, some of which are extremely rare (Kingdom Hearts item synthesizing, FFX's monster arena)
In most cases going ahead with these things is optional, but what a lot of the games have in common (especially in the last few years) is attaching some kind of bonus to what I like to think of as obsessive-compulsive side missions. Doing them is as boring as hell, but there is just enough incentive attached to go through with it that a lot of gamers will press on.
Some examples are: blooper clips at the ending of the game, new items unlocked, new levels unlocked, alternate endings, new difficulty levels, etc.
What most of these bonuses have in common is that they don't usually add a lot to the game's story and feel more like pieces tacked on as an afterthought.
1) This might seem obvious, but it could be the tire pressure. If you're on a mountain bike, get a pump with a gauge and inflate the tire to 50 psi (check the side of the tire first to see the safe ranges for inflation -- usually 40 to 65 psi). Usually that's the NUMBER ONE reason behind why people find that they're putting a lot of effort into riding.
If you're just eyeballing the tire and feeling it until "it's solid" then you still might be underinflating. Even 20 psi can feel/look solid.
2) Brakes rubbing against the rim even when released. Lift up your front wheel and spin it. If your brakes rub against the wheel at a certain point then you need to have your wheel straightened. If the brakes consistently rub against the wheel then they're too tight. Repeat the same step for the rear wheel. Re-test after squeezing the brakes hard and releasing. Regardless, your pedaling energy is going into wearing down your brake pads instead of going up the hill.
3) A bent rim or broken spokes. Both of these result in a misshaped wheel (on different axes) and kill your ride.
4) The reasons given by the posters above (out of shape / haven't developed your leg muscles enough yet)
5) *Steep* uphills are always going to be hard. This sorta ties into 4) but you'll find that your pain will reach a tolerable upper limit. ie: your thighs might ache the whole way up a steep hill but it never really hurts more than it did when you were at the base of the hill.
Redhat is the jock of linux distributions. It gets all the women and all the money.
Fedora is the younger brother of Redhat, who is trying to be like his older brother but is awkward with women and mostly living in his brother's shadow. When other OSes come over to visit they pretend they're there to borrow Fedora's features but they're really eyeing Redhat.
Gentoo is the old man next door who keeps talking about how great things were in his day and insists on taking his 30 year old bicycle to buy a loaf of bread from the exact same store at 7 AM each and every day.
Debian is the extreme left-wing version of Gentoo. He pretends he isn't anything like Gentoo but most observers see otherwise.
Mandrake is the quiet neighbour next door that you find out went on a shooting spree overnight.
Slackware is the Sunset Boulevard of distributions. Getting up there in age, but still very attractive to those who knew Slackware when it was younger.
Knoppix is the pimp of distributions -- very flashy and loud.
LinuxOne is the guy at the flea markets who sells burned PS2 DVDs.
If reviewers would admit this then we could all go on with our lives.
When I hear stories of the RIAA talking about music sales going down due to file sharing, I get really tired about the other side of the story not being discussed.
I own nearly 200 CDs and have bought 4 in the last year or so. Why has my purchase rate dropped by 2/3 or so?
1) I'm already happy with what I have.
2) Changing perception of how much music is really worth to me -- not in terms of "because I can get it for free" but just in terms of its price relative to other things I want to do in my life. Looking through my already-existing collection I can look at each CD and go "Was that really worth $20?" I honestly feel like maybe 20% of it was worth it. Maybe that makes me a dumber buyer than most.
3) Second thoughts every time I'm in a CD shop and think about how the RIAA treats file traders. I understand that what's being done is illegal, but I don't agree with assuming that they've caused $90,000 in damage by sharing one song with 14 downloads in the last month.
4) Access to Internet radio which gives me far more of an opportunity to listen to the genres of music I enjoy with far, far, far less ads.
I understand that the popularity of Internet radio might change the ad ratio in the future, but while my choice in the FM radio is limited, my choices online are not.
5) Using my local library for movies, books, and music. I understand that some people don't live in a large city and can't take advantage of this, but those who are might want to give it a try. The city I live in allows me to reserve an item from any library in the greater metropolitain area and have it sent to the library closest to where I live. Returns work the same way.
The library might not have the CD of a random indie group you heard at a bar/club/rave last night, and some of the waits for a reservation can be long (think in terms of half a year for some items -- this is balanced out by the fact that you can book 50 things at a time) but they can help with some needs:)
--
I was considering buying music online but the sound quality and the idea that I didn't really have much more than an ephemeral/virtual "proof of purchase" were those that stopped me (with a CD, you can consider ownership of the physical item a proof of purchase in a sense). Adding a ludicrous price to the equation doesn't help.
Anyway, the market will sort itself out. It should be an interesting decade for music:)
I've read through all of the parent comments at -1 and I don't think I found a single serious comment.
Given that most of the comments in this story are variations of the same joke, why are most not modded redundant? Are people just scrolling down to random comments and discovering latter repeated jokes for the first time?
Funny, I usually see your 80's published as '80s in the news. The latter makes more sense seeing as how it's a "contraction" of 1980s, similar to because vs 'cause.
"I have this song stuck in my head where the girl sings about things she can't get out of her head. Here's the.wav file of me humming it. What is it?"
"Ever see that movie where the guy gets the axe at the end and it takes place in the forest or something? I saw it when I was 7. What is it?"
"Anyone ever been on this roller coaster (I think it was in Ohio) where you do 3 loops and go into a mountain shaped like a dragon? What is it?"
"I saw this music video on TV.. everything was made out of cardboard and the girl was singing something about a "point of view." It was really good. What is it?"
"Ever play this game where you're this taxi and you have to pick up people and drop them off? They say "Pad 1 please!" and you have to drop them off at pad 1 while being careful not to land too hard. What is it?"
"I saw this picture of a bunch of red sand and rocks and it was like 10 megapixels big. What is that?"
"I saw this guy driving down the highway with a bunch of blue lights coming out of the bottom of his car. What are those?"
#1: Don't lay off people when you're posting record profits.
#2: Don't get yourself a generic patent meant to serve as suing fodder years down the line instead of something being designed for a specific product/piece of S/W.
#3: Check out any downbeat memo at internalmemos.com or stories from fuckedcompany.com and try not to re-create them.
#4: Don't sacrifice experienced employees for cheap ones.
#5: Try not to have employees living under the constant threat of layoffs. Sticks instead of dangling carrots get annoying after a while.
Most of these points run into each other. A lot of them seem like common sense and can be boiled down to "Don't be a greedy bastard."
I would say that the key difference is that your friend in the car can watch your body language and the traffic and can quiet down accordingly during a tense moment. On top of that, they're an extra set of eyes when something bad is about to happen. The person on the phone has no idea what situation you're in at any given time.
If the guy is using the cell phone to deal with business stuff, then most likely the conversation will be a lot more focused than a car trip with your friend discussing the latest movie that just came out.
Obviously there are exceptions, like breaking up with your gf in person while going down the highway, but for the most part I'd guess a business conversation would be more distracting than one between friends.
Using a headset does make using your cell phone safer (it frees up a hand) but the real danger lies in the fact that you're attempting to have a focused conversation while driving at 60 mph.
I wouldn't have piped up at all had you not said "I wanted to be safe." But based on that, my best advice is to use the cell phone as little as possible while in your car.
Why do planes have black boxes in the first place? I'm guessing the pilots of the plane have a responsibility to their passengers. In the event of a crash, grieving families might want to know what exactly went wrong before a crash. Is a car any different?
If I'm a passenger driving with a friend, that friend has a responsibility to get me from A to B safely. The same rules apply to me as a driver. I know that if a friend of mine was killed in a crash that I'd like to know if it happened to be someone else's fault or ultimately the car that was driving my friend's fault.
If you can prove these things inaccurate in crash conditions then maybe we should be second-guessing whether to use them to prosecute people. Until then, I don't see why it's harmful to use them as a tool to reconstruct fault.
What do you guys/girls see in Bruce Campbell?
on
Review: 'Bubba Ho-Tep'
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I'll be honest straight off: I think he's an OK actor, but I haven't seen anything about him that really excites me. He was funny in the Evil Dead movies and it's cool that he doesn't seem to be snobbish about his cult fame.
On the other hand, I have two friends that are very much into him. These two friends are also very much into the character of Boba Fett who, again, seems like a very random character (esp. seeing as how he doesn't even have dialogue) to get excited about.
So my question is this: What is it about Bruce Campbell that excites you? Why does he have such a hardcore following? I'm not saying it's *WRONG*, I just don't see the potential myself.
If my toaster were Linux powered, my toast would come out perfectly every time. The caveat is that the toast would have to be cut up into 40 pieces and thrown up into the air because the toaster is mounted on the ceiling and everyone who suggests that it should go on a counter would be told "You can open up the toaster and see the guts. Go build your own."
On top of that, no one knows that they have to cut their toast into 40 pieces before a perfect toasting session because asking for help with their toaster nets them a "RTFM," leading them to a 400 page manual that explains everything but they kitchen sink when they just want to have a piece of toast. That, or they get directed to toast tech support which charges them $50 a year for a straight answer.
There'd be a ToastMaster who would decide when and where the latest model of the toaster gets released. Again, other gizmo fans could roll their own toaster, but people taking on names like ToasterOne would end up getting in shit for doing so.
Some big name electronic stores have manager/salesperson quotas on how many extended warranties are sold, with the idea being that you slim your margins on an electronics item, and get it back on the warranty.
The Future Shop stores I've been to here are fairly pushy with their warranties. I purchased a $500 digital camera and was asked twice by the clerk why I didn't want an extended warranty. Then the clerk went to the manager who approached me and asked me why I didn't want a warranty. If the store is doing this for the customer's benefit, then they're most likely not going to bug you about it unless they can get something in return.
So I do take a chance when I go without paying $50 on a $500 camera for 2 more years of warranty, but at the same time, when I use my CC to buy it, my warranty gets doubled by up to a year anyway. What are the odds of it breaking in year 3 as opposed to 1 and 2? On top of that, my $500 camera would probably cost $150 come year 3.
If I found a set of electronic gizmos breaking down in year 3 from a certain manufacturer, I just wouldn't buy from that manufacturer anymore.
Non-USB Cable and DSL modems are also hardware-based, and can communicate at speeds 20-30x faster than a 56k modem. Given that, I paid $150 for my DSL modem 2 years ago. Is there something unique in a USRobotics external hardware modem that makes it that much more expensive than a DSL/cable modem despite being around for 5+ years now?
The internal USR 56k modems go for $80 here and are not winmodems. Is there an additional $90 worth of circuitry/plastic/shielding that goes into the external?
I would absolutely *LOVE* if someone could tell me how much both USR and retailers are making on external 56k modems:
Future Shop (Canada's version of Best Buy) is selling an external one for $170 CAD (~$120 USD?). It seems hard to believe that the price of one hasn't come down in what, over half a decade?
I've seen the resolution of 35 mm film being compared to the Canon D60 (6 megapixels). The article gives the indication that the tv will be giving off 33 megapixels.
From IMAX's website: "The 15/70 frame is 10 times larger than the 35mm used in regular theatres and three times larger than standard 70mm film used in classic Hollywood epics."
So if 35mm is ~= 6 megapixels, IMAX ~= 60 megapixels? IMAX still looks better on a huge screen?
Mind you, seeing this kind of resolution on a smaller screen should be amazing.
Slashdot Mirror
"The researchers were able to teleport three distinct polarisation states between Alice and Bob via the fibre-optic cable through the tunnel. The process is not instantaneous as it is limited by the speed of light."
Doesn't sound like teleporting to me so much as uploading.
Then again, I'm just grasping at straws hoping to get Canada its first gold medal in first non-anonymous post to have quoted an article done by a member without a Slashdot subscription.
Isn't this the scenario that Ayn Rand dreamed about? A company that's achieved the ultimate in efficiency now making huge volumes of sales as a reward because no one can become more efficient than them and make a cheaper product?
Actually, someone will but they'll cut even more corners to do that and humorous customer stories of Apex's power buttons falling off will become "Remember when things weren't that bad?" tales of the past.
Maybe I'm slippery sloping but things already are pretty crappy in terms of low-end DVD players.
That's because the cost of oil and highway/air infrastructure are subsidized by taxpayers already to make the cost of the item only appear cheaper.
Factor in the costs of road/airport maintenance and building, land clearing, emergency funds for things such as oil spills and trucking accidents, political costs associated with maintaining a reasonable oil price, lowered tariffs, and later dollar-value loss from free trade and the prices at your local Best Buy might not feel so cheap.
I liked Dragon's Lair.. then I liked Dragon's Lair II (the level with the piano playing was fantastic).
:)
Nowadays, I like Dance Dance Revolution. All pretty much the same interface (except Dragon's Lair didn't have any moves where you had to hold the joystick/sword button down for a long period of time if I'm remembering right).
The day someone can combine the fitness involved in DDR with a game that looks like Dragon's Lair, I'll be there too
I'd be happy if games came out with 30+ hours of real game time period. Most of the games with hours of gameplay numbering higher seem to consist of one of the following elements that don't take much more effort from a programming/design standpoint:
Find X packages, markers, dogs, cats, gerbils, etc. (GTA III/VC, Kingdom Hearts, Banjo-Kazooie, countless others)
Slow down walking speed to a crawl to make the game world feel larger (Elder Scrolls III)
Get an ability at one end of the map that you have to use at the opposite end to get past the place that wasn't passable before (the Metroids, Donkey Kong 64, Metal Gear)
Create artificially difficult RPG bosses which require dozens of hours of fighting in order to get strong enough to beat/unlock (Final Fantasy secret bosses)
Unlocking secret levels which require abilities that only the 99.999th percentile of gamers have (Super Monkey Ball's master levels)
Hunting down items/monsters that drop/appear randomly, some of which are extremely rare (Kingdom Hearts item synthesizing, FFX's monster arena)
In most cases going ahead with these things is optional, but what a lot of the games have in common (especially in the last few years) is attaching some kind of bonus to what I like to think of as obsessive-compulsive side missions. Doing them is as boring as hell, but there is just enough incentive attached to go through with it that a lot of gamers will press on.
Some examples are: blooper clips at the ending of the game, new items unlocked, new levels unlocked, alternate endings, new difficulty levels, etc.
What most of these bonuses have in common is that they don't usually add a lot to the game's story and feel more like pieces tacked on as an afterthought.
5 possibilities that I can think of...
1) This might seem obvious, but it could be the tire pressure. If you're on a mountain bike, get a pump with a gauge and inflate the tire to 50 psi (check the side of the tire first to see the safe ranges for inflation -- usually 40 to 65 psi). Usually that's the NUMBER ONE reason behind why people find that they're putting a lot of effort into riding.
If you're just eyeballing the tire and feeling it until "it's solid" then you still might be underinflating. Even 20 psi can feel/look solid.
2) Brakes rubbing against the rim even when released. Lift up your front wheel and spin it. If your brakes rub against the wheel at a certain point then you need to have your wheel straightened. If the brakes consistently rub against the wheel then they're too tight. Repeat the same step for the rear wheel. Re-test after squeezing the brakes hard and releasing. Regardless, your pedaling energy is going into wearing down your brake pads instead of going up the hill.
3) A bent rim or broken spokes. Both of these result in a misshaped wheel (on different axes) and kill your ride.
4) The reasons given by the posters above (out of shape / haven't developed your leg muscles enough yet)
5) *Steep* uphills are always going to be hard. This sorta ties into 4) but you'll find that your pain will reach a tolerable upper limit. ie: your thighs might ache the whole way up a steep hill but it never really hurts more than it did when you were at the base of the hill.
Redhat is the jock of linux distributions. It gets all the women and all the money.
Fedora is the younger brother of Redhat, who is trying to be like his older brother but is awkward with women and mostly living in his brother's shadow. When other OSes come over to visit they pretend they're there to borrow Fedora's features but they're really eyeing Redhat.
Gentoo is the old man next door who keeps talking about how great things were in his day and insists on taking his 30 year old bicycle to buy a loaf of bread from the exact same store at 7 AM each and every day.
Debian is the extreme left-wing version of Gentoo. He pretends he isn't anything like Gentoo but most observers see otherwise.
Mandrake is the quiet neighbour next door that you find out went on a shooting spree overnight.
Slackware is the Sunset Boulevard of distributions. Getting up there in age, but still very attractive to those who knew Slackware when it was younger.
Knoppix is the pimp of distributions -- very flashy and loud.
LinuxOne is the guy at the flea markets who sells burned PS2 DVDs.
If reviewers would admit this then we could all go on with our lives.
When I hear stories of the RIAA talking about music sales going down due to file sharing, I get really tired about the other side of the story not being discussed.
:)
:)
I own nearly 200 CDs and have bought 4 in the last year or so. Why has my purchase rate dropped by 2/3 or so?
1) I'm already happy with what I have.
2) Changing perception of how much music is really worth to me -- not in terms of "because I can get it for free" but just in terms of its price relative to other things I want to do in my life. Looking through my already-existing collection I can look at each CD and go "Was that really worth $20?" I honestly feel like maybe 20% of it was worth it. Maybe that makes me a dumber buyer than most.
3) Second thoughts every time I'm in a CD shop and think about how the RIAA treats file traders. I understand that what's being done is illegal, but I don't agree with assuming that they've caused $90,000 in damage by sharing one song with 14 downloads in the last month.
4) Access to Internet radio which gives me far more of an opportunity to listen to the genres of music I enjoy with far, far, far less ads.
I understand that the popularity of Internet radio might change the ad ratio in the future, but while my choice in the FM radio is limited, my choices online are not.
5) Using my local library for movies, books, and music. I understand that some people don't live in a large city and can't take advantage of this, but those who are might want to give it a try. The city I live in allows me to reserve an item from any library in the greater metropolitain area and have it sent to the library closest to where I live. Returns work the same way.
The library might not have the CD of a random indie group you heard at a bar/club/rave last night, and some of the waits for a reservation can be long (think in terms of half a year for some items -- this is balanced out by the fact that you can book 50 things at a time) but they can help with some needs
--
I was considering buying music online but the sound quality and the idea that I didn't really have much more than an ephemeral/virtual "proof of purchase" were those that stopped me (with a CD, you can consider ownership of the physical item a proof of purchase in a sense). Adding a ludicrous price to the equation doesn't help.
Anyway, the market will sort itself out. It should be an interesting decade for music
I've read through all of the parent comments at -1 and I don't think I found a single serious comment.
Given that most of the comments in this story are variations of the same joke, why are most not modded redundant? Are people just scrolling down to random comments and discovering latter repeated jokes for the first time?
How long until someone imprints goatse into the third visual phase of the coin as a prank?
Funny, I usually see your 80's published as '80s in the news. The latter makes more sense seeing as how it's a "contraction" of 1980s, similar to because vs 'cause.
"I have this song stuck in my head where the girl sings about things she can't get out of her head. Here's the .wav file of me humming it. What is it?"
"Ever see that movie where the guy gets the axe at the end and it takes place in the forest or something? I saw it when I was 7. What is it?"
"Anyone ever been on this roller coaster (I think it was in Ohio) where you do 3 loops and go into a mountain shaped like a dragon? What is it?"
"I saw this music video on TV.. everything was made out of cardboard and the girl was singing something about a "point of view." It was really good. What is it?"
"Ever play this game where you're this taxi and you have to pick up people and drop them off? They say "Pad 1 please!" and you have to drop them off at pad 1 while being careful not to land too hard. What is it?"
"I saw this picture of a bunch of red sand and rocks and it was like 10 megapixels big. What is that?"
"I saw this guy driving down the highway with a bunch of blue lights coming out of the bottom of his car. What are those?"
#1: Don't lay off people when you're posting record profits.
#2: Don't get yourself a generic patent meant to serve as suing fodder years down the line instead of something being designed for a specific product/piece of S/W.
#3: Check out any downbeat memo at internalmemos.com or stories from fuckedcompany.com and try not to re-create them.
#4: Don't sacrifice experienced employees for cheap ones.
#5: Try not to have employees living under the constant threat of layoffs. Sticks instead of dangling carrots get annoying after a while.
Most of these points run into each other. A lot of them seem like common sense and can be boiled down to "Don't be a greedy bastard."
I responded to this in a sibling post.
I would say that the key difference is that your friend in the car can watch your body language and the traffic and can quiet down accordingly during a tense moment. On top of that, they're an extra set of eyes when something bad is about to happen. The person on the phone has no idea what situation you're in at any given time.
If the guy is using the cell phone to deal with business stuff, then most likely the conversation will be a lot more focused than a car trip with your friend discussing the latest movie that just came out.
Obviously there are exceptions, like breaking up with your gf in person while going down the highway, but for the most part I'd guess a business conversation would be more distracting than one between friends.
Using a headset does make using your cell phone safer (it frees up a hand) but the real danger lies in the fact that you're attempting to have a focused conversation while driving at 60 mph.
I wouldn't have piped up at all had you not said "I wanted to be safe." But based on that, my best advice is to use the cell phone as little as possible while in your car.
Why do planes have black boxes in the first place? I'm guessing the pilots of the plane have a responsibility to their passengers. In the event of a crash, grieving families might want to know what exactly went wrong before a crash. Is a car any different?
If I'm a passenger driving with a friend, that friend has a responsibility to get me from A to B safely. The same rules apply to me as a driver. I know that if a friend of mine was killed in a crash that I'd like to know if it happened to be someone else's fault or ultimately the car that was driving my friend's fault.
If you can prove these things inaccurate in crash conditions then maybe we should be second-guessing whether to use them to prosecute people. Until then, I don't see why it's harmful to use them as a tool to reconstruct fault.
I'll be honest straight off: I think he's an OK actor, but I haven't seen anything about him that really excites me. He was funny in the Evil Dead movies and it's cool that he doesn't seem to be snobbish about his cult fame.
On the other hand, I have two friends that are very much into him. These two friends are also very much into the character of Boba Fett who, again, seems like a very random character (esp. seeing as how he doesn't even have dialogue) to get excited about.
So my question is this: What is it about Bruce Campbell that excites you? Why does he have such a hardcore following? I'm not saying it's *WRONG*, I just don't see the potential myself.
If my toaster were Linux powered, my toast would come out perfectly every time. The caveat is that the toast would have to be cut up into 40 pieces and thrown up into the air because the toaster is mounted on the ceiling and everyone who suggests that it should go on a counter would be told "You can open up the toaster and see the guts. Go build your own."
On top of that, no one knows that they have to cut their toast into 40 pieces before a perfect toasting session because asking for help with their toaster nets them a "RTFM," leading them to a 400 page manual that explains everything but they kitchen sink when they just want to have a piece of toast. That, or they get directed to toast tech support which charges them $50 a year for a straight answer.
There'd be a ToastMaster who would decide when and where the latest model of the toaster gets released. Again, other gizmo fans could roll their own toaster, but people taking on names like ToasterOne would end up getting in shit for doing so.
Some big name electronic stores have manager/salesperson quotas on how many extended warranties are sold, with the idea being that you slim your margins on an electronics item, and get it back on the warranty.
The Future Shop stores I've been to here are fairly pushy with their warranties. I purchased a $500 digital camera and was asked twice by the clerk why I didn't want an extended warranty. Then the clerk went to the manager who approached me and asked me why I didn't want a warranty. If the store is doing this for the customer's benefit, then they're most likely not going to bug you about it unless they can get something in return.
So I do take a chance when I go without paying $50 on a $500 camera for 2 more years of warranty, but at the same time, when I use my CC to buy it, my warranty gets doubled by up to a year anyway. What are the odds of it breaking in year 3 as opposed to 1 and 2? On top of that, my $500 camera would probably cost $150 come year 3.
If I found a set of electronic gizmos breaking down in year 3 from a certain manufacturer, I just wouldn't buy from that manufacturer anymore.
Non-USB Cable and DSL modems are also hardware-based, and can communicate at speeds 20-30x faster than a 56k modem. Given that, I paid $150 for my DSL modem 2 years ago. Is there something unique in a USRobotics external hardware modem that makes it that much more expensive than a DSL/cable modem despite being around for 5+ years now?
The internal USR 56k modems go for $80 here and are not winmodems. Is there an additional $90 worth of circuitry/plastic/shielding that goes into the external?
I would absolutely *LOVE* if someone could tell me how much both USR and retailers are making on external 56k modems:
Future Shop (Canada's version of Best Buy) is selling an external one for $170 CAD (~$120 USD?). It seems hard to believe that the price of one hasn't come down in what, over half a decade?
CAT5 cable usually selling at a 300% markup in "big box stores" compared to other small PC retailers.
Audio cables named after any sort of "Monster."
Mousepads are probably at a 1000% markup.
Do extended warranties count as markup?
I've seen the resolution of 35 mm film being compared to the Canon D60 (6 megapixels). The article gives the indication that the tv will be giving off 33 megapixels.
From IMAX's website: "The 15/70 frame is 10 times larger than the 35mm used in regular theatres and three times larger than standard 70mm film used in classic Hollywood epics."
So if 35mm is ~= 6 megapixels, IMAX ~= 60 megapixels? IMAX still looks better on a huge screen?
Mind you, seeing this kind of resolution on a smaller screen should be amazing.
Maybe their slogan should be "The Inquirer: All your baseless speculation are belong to us."