The breaker-box is rated for 100A, so 25KW at the voltage here. But that don't mean we -use- even close to that, indeed if we did we would use aproximately 18000 kwh/month, whereas in reality we use aproximately 1000Kwh/month.
Half of that is heating. There are easier ways of turning hydrogen into heat than using a fuel-cell....
From 1000feet with a good tele-lens you can get much more detailed pictures than the stuff Google shoots from the streets. So this means the very same, or BETTER pictures would be ok if obtained differently.
No real risk. Mac-adresses only need to be unique on one network-segments, it's -below- ip afterall, and it's rare to have more than a few hundred computers (virtual or not) on one segment. MAC-adresses are 48-bit, which mean if you assigned them randomly, you'd need aproximately 16 million computers on a single network-segment before two would be likely to get the same one by accident.
Unlikely to happen, unless you're having a truly bizarre network-setup.
This is factually wrong. It -is- true that you aren't allowed to strike anyone, child or not. But there are exceptions, one of them is to avoid larger consequences, be it in self-defence or in defence of others.
There are -lots- of things you aren't allowed to do, generally, but which is nevertheless perfectly LEGAL in an emergency.
For example, normally you can't trespass. Guess what, if a house is burning and you smash trough a window to search for people in the house -- you're NOT guilty of trespass. (also not "destruction of property" for breaking the window or similar)
In most, perhaps. But note that it's perfectly legal to -fly- above peoples property in a normal plane, or a balloon or whatever. You can get basically any level of detail you want from a plane a few hundred meters up, or a balloon.
It's not true, no. I'm a norwegian, which is about as universal as they come when healthcare is the issue. My wife and I earn about $170.000/year which makes us pretty squarely middle-class. Taxes are about 30% of this. Which I don't think is out of line at all, do keep in mind that that includes the full deal from healthcare trough pensions, unemployment insurance, free state-paid colleges, government-sponsored childcare, the complete deal. (i.e. there are no "additional" insurances or fees you need to pay to be well-covered)
True if countries where isolated.
However there is LOTS of international trade, so infact, your claims don't hold. A large percentage of the stuff you buy are made abroad, or have major components that are. The price of those cannot be decided by USA alone. Sure you could devalue the dollar, and thus up GDP measured in dollars, but that'd up everyone ELSEs GDP too, so the relative standings would not change.
Cutting the population in half would work - IF and ONLY IF you could do it *without* negatively influencing production, which you very obviously can not.
Those tests only tell part of the story though. They say what happens -if- you are in a crash. They do not say anything about how likely you are to get into a crash.
A more agile, stabile, lightweight car may in some situations completely avoid a crash that a larger, heavier, less agile SUV can't avoid. This ain't included in crash-test statistics, those only show what happens IF you crash.
They also do not include damage done to others, only to people inside your own vehicle. A larger heavier vehicle will cause more damage to the car it collides with than a smaller ligther one, thus increasing the chance of injury, or the severity of injury for people in that car.
Offcourse if all you care about is yourself, then that doesn't matter.
No. Read again. I'm telling you that overall -- people tend to worry about the spectacular but highly unlikely, while ignoring the everyday trivial risks allthough the latter are MUCH more likely to harm or kill you.
People drive gas-guzzlers DESPITE the existence of much better vehicles. Some of the SAME people worry that the LHC will destroy the earth.
Did you ever wonder why maintaining a fleet of buses, fueling them, having drivers for them, buying new ones as they wear out etc is financeable, whereas building a pedestrian-bridge so that people who walk can safely cross the road no matter the traffic-level is -not- financeable ?
To some degree it's a chicken-and-egg problem: There's no point in making communities pedestrian-friendly, because nobody walks anyway. And nobody in their right mind would walk -- because the community ain't pedestrian-friendly.
The world would be a better place if people grokked this.
They worry about terrorists -- but ignore the risk of diabetes. (the latter is 1000 times more likely to hurt or kill you)
They worry about abduction by unknown pedos -- but ignore traffic. (the latter is 1000 times more likely to hurt or kill your child)
They worry about the "radiation" from a cellphone-tower 50 meters from their house -- but pay good money to lie down near-nude in the strongest uv-radiation they are able to find. (the former is very likely completely harmless, the latter is KNOWN to cause premature aging of skin and increase the risk of skin-cancer)
They protest that the LHC will produce black holes that swallow the earth, but don't care if their car uses 5l/100km or 12l/100km. (the former is unphysical plainly impossible, the latter contributes to increased global warming with a very high probability (i.e. basically a certanity))
Violent death, to a first aproximation, is equal to traffic-death plus suicide. To a first aproximation, if you are killed, it will be because you kill yourself.
To a first aproximation, if you live in the modern west, accidents don't kill; disease do. ELIMINATING *ALL* accidents and *all* murders would only reduce deaths by 5% or thereabouts.
In short, the most dangerous things you and your children do are:
1) Getting too little physical activity, 2) Having unhealthy eating-habits and 3) Participating in traffic. (for those who smoke or have a high drug-consumption (including alcohol) that is one too.
True in theory, nonsense in practice. It's ok to think long-term. But it is silly to concern oneself with problems whose first possible date of appearance is many millenia into the future. There are just so many unknowns in such speculation that it is meaningless.
Geothermal is of that magnitude -- you'd have to tap a thousand times our current energy-use for millenia to even have a measurable impact.
But buying a CD from a major label causes something like $5-$10 to end up in the hands of a cartel which uses significant fractions of its income to actively figth, corrupt and lobby government in order to have laws changed or written to write their own personal agenda, one which I personally find harmful. It also results in $1 or thereabout in economical stimulus to the creative artist.
Whereas copying the same CD does neither. (neither finance the RIAAs antics, nor support the artist)
It's not obvious that the second action is on the whole, more harmful to society than the first. It migth be, but it's in no way obvious.
Where you to copy the CD, and send $3 directly to the artist (I'm aware that nobody DOES this), this would certainly be better for society as a whole than buying the CD -- despite being illegal.
Just 'cos something is legal, doesn't mean it's right. And just because something is illegal, doesn't mean it's wrong.
Because putting a human geologist on mars for a month would cost several orders of magnitude more than having spirit and opportunity there for years ?
A human would need water,air,food,waste-management for the duration of the entire mission. And he'd need a method of -returning- from mars (suicide-mission would be politically unfeasible), which makes the entire thing a LOT more complicated than it is sending a robot.
Yes. A geologist with adequate equipment is MUCH more effective and versatile than one of these robots. But putting one there would also be MUCH more expensive, so it would be unlikely to actually make economical sense in the near future.
There is no ABSOLUTE proof of anything outside of maths, so that's a complete crap statement.
There are dozens and dozens of studies that show a strong statistical correlation between secdond-hand-smoking and a long range of health-problems such as higher cancer-rates, increased risk of SIDS, increased risk of premature childbirt, higher incidence of asthma, heart-problems, and higher suspectibility to airborns diseases such as throat-infections.
The evidence has been weighted and evaluated by all major medical research organizations, they all support the assertion that there is strong evidence for a link between second hand smoking and health-problems. But Hi, I'll take -your- baseless claims over the carefully weighted opinion of WHO, the Surgeon General, the National Cancer Institute and all of the rest.
Even when you're demonstrably wrong. Everything is not, infact, based on a single questionable report from decades back. To the contrary, it's based on careful evaluation of dozens of thorough epidemical, theoretical and experimental studies. Wikipedia has links to aproximately 2 dozen of them if you care enough to actually go read.
You're right, offcourse, that the effects are strongest when you're closed up in a small room with many smokers for long periods of time. The two groups that typically suffer the most are people working in bars and children growing up with two smoking parents. (a decade ago it was perfectly normal for parents to for example BOTH be smoking in the car while transporting their own kids...
True that. But if the cellphone transmits at 300mW, of which 50mW are immediately absorbed by your head, you'd need to be really REALLY unlucky with the reflections for the sum total, including reflections, to hit 60mW. It's not as if your head is the MAIN rf-absorbing thingie in a PERFECTLY reflective bus...
Meanwhile many of the same people expose their naked skin to 1KW/m^2 of radiation, including components that *ARE* known to cause skin-cancer. Some of them even strip near-naked and lie down for hours on end in the strongest radiation they can find.
The average car may keep the same owner for 5 years. But the average car is significantly older than 5 years before it gets removed from the roads and scrapped. Typically something like 3 times that age.
Your point still stands though.
You say there doesn't need to be a definition, and then proceed to give an (aproximate) one.
Your given definition is something like: "An enemy of the United States is a person, organization or other group located OUTSIDE the United States, that the current president decides to name such. It is also a group or organization inside the USA that wages war against the United States government"
That's one definition, and possibly close to the one actually used for determining if a certain act is treason or not. But as you see, you DO need that (or a similar) definition. It's also not clear what it means to levy war. War is something like "organized use of weapons and physical force in a conflict between two large groups", but again, what is a "large" group ? (we don't call something war if a -small- group or a single person engages in the same kind of behaviour, we call it "crime".)
I ain't saying treason as interpreted by the courts ain't a fairly clear concept. I'm just saying, very few things are trivial or obvious. And when you think something is obvious or trivial, more often than not, it's because you haven't thougth about it a lot. Fact is, there are several acts and circumstances where it's a tricky call to decide if something is treason, or not. The courts do a decent job of it most of the time, but it's not an EASY job.
Nah. They exist, they're just rare. Infact there's several of them right here. Hi Marianne ! Hi Sini ! Hi Nadine ! Hi Miriam !
If you don't know them -- your loss.:-)
Okay, so not all Electrical Engineering. Marianne is an industrial engineer, Sini is a Doctor of Comp.Sci, Nadine has a bachelor (I think, migth be master) also from Comp.Sci but Miriam is an honest-to good electrical engineer, working on improving big-ass electrical generators for a hydroelectric powerplant here in Norway.
Due to an abundance of idiots though, 3 of them post under gender-neutral nicknames, I can't blame them. (for similar reasons, forget about pics or any more spesifics, if they want to out themselves they can do it themselves, I won't.)
Are you saying that foreign investments are somehow bad ? Even if the investor very carefully follows all the rules-of-play setup by that nations government ? That makes zero sense, infact most countries (including the USA) WELCOMES investments. I have several, for example.
And I also most definitely try to change your laws. I would like you to cancel the DMCA, adopt a less agressive foreign policy, agressively push science forward on renewable energies, adopt universal healthcare, and tons and tons of other changes, small and large. I openly argue my opinion, in the hope that someone will listen. Are you saying that foreigners should refrain from having an opinion on US law, or refrain from discussing it openly ?
I, both openly and secretly work to undermine and indeed utterly destroy "customs" which I consider wrong. These include the sexual mutilation of young females, the refusal to allow adult, consenting human beings to have sex with whomever they damn well please, punishment or inacceptance of people with the wrong beliefs, and a large collection of other bullshit.
Are you saying we should refrain from having an opinion, or refrain from stating it, or refrain from DOING something when we see injustice, if that injustice is on the other side of an imaginary object named a "border" ?
What's so magical about a "border" anyway ? A "country" is a human construct. I don't see a border as carrying any moral or ethical weight. I don't see that the right thing to do if my neighbour is suffering is any different if there's a border between us or not.
I'm all with you in respecting people, though. And the learning part, not only the language, but a lot more too. It's easy to critizise what you do not understand. One should always strive to *understand* what's really going on, rather than resort to knee-jerk reactions.
But it's not that simple, it never is in law. First you need a legal definition of "enemy", which ain't all that trivial at all.
Second, you need one for "aid and comfort".
Would you agree that Osama bin Laden is an "enemy of the United States" ? If he is ever captured, are jailworkers that give him stuff like food, water and blankets guilty of "treason" ? They obviously -are- giving him aid and comfort....
It's sort of a chicken-and-egg thing. The internet is useful for more than sending email and reading web-pages, but many of the other applications require either always-on-unmetered or reasonable-bandwith or both.
Video-conferencing is cool for grandmothers who live to far away to visit often. (my kids have grandparents in Germany, for example)
Vo-ip makes communicating with people abroad cheap, infact in many cases free.
TV-on-demand over IP is like owning a monster-TIVO.
Slashdot Mirror
The breaker-box is rated for 100A, so 25KW at the voltage here. But that don't mean we -use- even close to that, indeed if we did we would use aproximately 18000 kwh/month, whereas in reality we use aproximately 1000Kwh/month.
Half of that is heating. There are easier ways of turning hydrogen into heat than using a fuel-cell....
From 1000feet with a good tele-lens you can get much more detailed pictures than the stuff Google shoots from the streets. So this means the very same, or BETTER pictures would be ok if obtained differently.
No real risk. Mac-adresses only need to be unique on one network-segments, it's -below- ip afterall, and it's rare to have more than a few hundred computers (virtual or not) on one segment. MAC-adresses are 48-bit, which mean if you assigned them randomly, you'd need aproximately 16 million computers on a single network-segment before two would be likely to get the same one by accident.
Unlikely to happen, unless you're having a truly bizarre network-setup.
This is factually wrong. It -is- true that you aren't allowed to strike anyone, child or not. But there are exceptions, one of them is to avoid larger consequences, be it in self-defence or in defence of others.
There are -lots- of things you aren't allowed to do, generally, but which is nevertheless perfectly LEGAL in an emergency.
For example, normally you can't trespass. Guess what, if a house is burning and you smash trough a window to search for people in the house -- you're NOT guilty of trespass. (also not "destruction of property" for breaking the window or similar)
In most, perhaps. But note that it's perfectly legal to -fly- above peoples property in a normal plane, or a balloon or whatever. You can get basically any level of detail you want from a plane a few hundred meters up, or a balloon.
So, in effect, the very same photo could likely have been OK if obtained in a different manner.
This: http://www.gulesider.no/kart/index.c?ps=1&companies=&orientation=1&q=polarveien+23e&imgt=PERSPECTIVE&id=a_1114049&n=58.946261325642574&s=58.94556918209484&e=5.723519805695579&w=5.722024917394716&panX=-2&panY=-156&tool=pan&scrollX=0&scrollY=0&zoomFactor=0.7 photo of my house is reasonably low-resolution, but that's because currently it ain't worthwhile to collect a terabyte when a megabyte will do, if they'd -wanted- hi-res photos of my house spesifically they could get MUCH better photage.
So, how low can I fly ? Is it okay if I use a hovercraft instead of a normal car, hovering 5 inches above your property ?
It's not true, no. I'm a norwegian, which is about as universal as they come when healthcare is the issue. My wife and I earn about $170.000/year which makes us pretty squarely middle-class. Taxes are about 30% of this. Which I don't think is out of line at all, do keep in mind that that includes the full deal from healthcare trough pensions, unemployment insurance, free state-paid colleges, government-sponsored childcare, the complete deal. (i.e. there are no "additional" insurances or fees you need to pay to be well-covered)
True if countries where isolated. However there is LOTS of international trade, so infact, your claims don't hold. A large percentage of the stuff you buy are made abroad, or have major components that are. The price of those cannot be decided by USA alone. Sure you could devalue the dollar, and thus up GDP measured in dollars, but that'd up everyone ELSEs GDP too, so the relative standings would not change. Cutting the population in half would work - IF and ONLY IF you could do it *without* negatively influencing production, which you very obviously can not.
Those tests only tell part of the story though. They say what happens -if- you are in a crash. They do not say anything about how likely you are to get into a crash.
A more agile, stabile, lightweight car may in some situations completely avoid a crash that a larger, heavier, less agile SUV can't avoid. This ain't included in crash-test statistics, those only show what happens IF you crash.
They also do not include damage done to others, only to people inside your own vehicle. A larger heavier vehicle will cause more damage to the car it collides with than a smaller ligther one, thus increasing the chance of injury, or the severity of injury for people in that car.
Offcourse if all you care about is yourself, then that doesn't matter.
There are lots of things one can do to make people bike and walk more.
You can build decent separate bike-roads.
You can provide adequate parking-possibilities for bikes near places where people go.
You can make it possible (and practical!) to bring a bike along on public transportation.
No. Read again. I'm telling you that overall -- people tend to worry about the spectacular but highly unlikely, while ignoring the everyday trivial risks allthough the latter are MUCH more likely to harm or kill you.
People drive gas-guzzlers DESPITE the existence of much better vehicles. Some of the SAME people worry that the LHC will destroy the earth.
Did you ever wonder why maintaining a fleet of buses, fueling them, having drivers for them, buying new ones as they wear out etc is financeable, whereas building a pedestrian-bridge so that people who walk can safely cross the road no matter the traffic-level is -not- financeable ?
To some degree it's a chicken-and-egg problem: There's no point in making communities pedestrian-friendly, because nobody walks anyway. And nobody in their right mind would walk -- because the community ain't pedestrian-friendly.
The world would be a better place if people grokked this.
They worry about terrorists -- but ignore the risk of diabetes. (the latter is 1000 times more likely to hurt or kill you)
They worry about abduction by unknown pedos -- but ignore traffic. (the latter is 1000 times more likely to hurt or kill your child)
They worry about the "radiation" from a cellphone-tower 50 meters from their house -- but pay good money to lie down near-nude in the strongest uv-radiation they are able to find. (the former is very likely completely harmless, the latter is KNOWN to cause premature aging of skin and increase the risk of skin-cancer)
They protest that the LHC will produce black holes that swallow the earth, but don't care if their car uses 5l/100km or 12l/100km. (the former is unphysical plainly impossible, the latter contributes to increased global warming with a very high probability (i.e. basically a certanity))
Violent death, to a first aproximation, is equal to traffic-death plus suicide. To a first aproximation, if you are killed, it will be because you kill yourself.
To a first aproximation, if you live in the modern west, accidents don't kill; disease do. ELIMINATING *ALL* accidents and *all* murders would only reduce deaths by 5% or thereabouts.
In short, the most dangerous things you and your children do are:
1) Getting too little physical activity, 2) Having unhealthy eating-habits and 3) Participating in traffic. (for those who smoke or have a high drug-consumption (including alcohol) that is one too.
True in theory, nonsense in practice. It's ok to think long-term. But it is silly to concern oneself with problems whose first possible date of appearance is many millenia into the future. There are just so many unknowns in such speculation that it is meaningless.
Geothermal is of that magnitude -- you'd have to tap a thousand times our current energy-use for millenia to even have a measurable impact.
Not in general stated in those terms, no.
But buying a CD from a major label causes something like $5-$10 to end up in the hands of a cartel which uses significant fractions of its income to actively figth, corrupt and lobby government in order to have laws changed or written to write their own personal agenda, one which I personally find harmful. It also results in $1 or thereabout in economical stimulus to the creative artist.
Whereas copying the same CD does neither. (neither finance the RIAAs antics, nor support the artist)
It's not obvious that the second action is on the whole, more harmful to society than the first. It migth be, but it's in no way obvious.
Where you to copy the CD, and send $3 directly to the artist (I'm aware that nobody DOES this), this would certainly be better for society as a whole than buying the CD -- despite being illegal.
Just 'cos something is legal, doesn't mean it's right. And just because something is illegal, doesn't mean it's wrong.
Because putting a human geologist on mars for a month would cost several orders of magnitude more than having spirit and opportunity there for years ?
A human would need water,air,food,waste-management for the duration of the entire mission. And he'd need a method of -returning- from mars (suicide-mission would be politically unfeasible), which makes the entire thing a LOT more complicated than it is sending a robot.
Yes. A geologist with adequate equipment is MUCH more effective and versatile than one of these robots. But putting one there would also be MUCH more expensive, so it would be unlikely to actually make economical sense in the near future.
There is no ABSOLUTE proof of anything outside of maths, so that's a complete crap statement.
There are dozens and dozens of studies that show a strong statistical correlation between secdond-hand-smoking and a long range of health-problems such as higher cancer-rates, increased risk of SIDS, increased risk of premature childbirt, higher incidence of asthma, heart-problems, and higher suspectibility to airborns diseases such as throat-infections.
The evidence has been weighted and evaluated by all major medical research organizations, they all support the assertion that there is strong evidence for a link between second hand smoking and health-problems. But Hi, I'll take -your- baseless claims over the carefully weighted opinion of WHO, the Surgeon General, the National Cancer Institute and all of the rest.
Even when you're demonstrably wrong. Everything is not, infact, based on a single questionable report from decades back. To the contrary, it's based on careful evaluation of dozens of thorough epidemical, theoretical and experimental studies. Wikipedia has links to aproximately 2 dozen of them if you care enough to actually go read.
You're right, offcourse, that the effects are strongest when you're closed up in a small room with many smokers for long periods of time. The two groups that typically suffer the most are people working in bars and children growing up with two smoking parents. (a decade ago it was perfectly normal for parents to for example BOTH be smoking in the car while transporting their own kids...
True that. But if the cellphone transmits at 300mW, of which 50mW are immediately absorbed by your head, you'd need to be really REALLY unlucky with the reflections for the sum total, including reflections, to hit 60mW. It's not as if your head is the MAIN rf-absorbing thingie in a PERFECTLY reflective bus...
Meanwhile many of the same people expose their naked skin to 1KW/m^2 of radiation, including components that *ARE* known to cause skin-cancer. Some of them even strip near-naked and lie down for hours on end in the strongest radiation they can find.
The average car may keep the same owner for 5 years. But the average car is significantly older than 5 years before it gets removed from the roads and scrapped. Typically something like 3 times that age. Your point still stands though.
That don't sound patronising at all, no way dude.
You say there doesn't need to be a definition, and then proceed to give an (aproximate) one.
Your given definition is something like: "An enemy of the United States is a person, organization or other group located OUTSIDE the United States, that the current president decides to name such. It is also a group or organization inside the USA that wages war against the United States government"
That's one definition, and possibly close to the one actually used for determining if a certain act is treason or not. But as you see, you DO need that (or a similar) definition. It's also not clear what it means to levy war. War is something like "organized use of weapons and physical force in a conflict between two large groups", but again, what is a "large" group ? (we don't call something war if a -small- group or a single person engages in the same kind of behaviour, we call it "crime".)
I ain't saying treason as interpreted by the courts ain't a fairly clear concept. I'm just saying, very few things are trivial or obvious. And when you think something is obvious or trivial, more often than not, it's because you haven't thougth about it a lot. Fact is, there are several acts and circumstances where it's a tricky call to decide if something is treason, or not. The courts do a decent job of it most of the time, but it's not an EASY job.
Nah. They exist, they're just rare. Infact there's several of them right here. Hi Marianne ! Hi Sini ! Hi Nadine ! Hi Miriam !
If you don't know them -- your loss. :-)
Okay, so not all Electrical Engineering. Marianne is an industrial engineer, Sini is a Doctor of Comp.Sci, Nadine has a bachelor (I think, migth be master) also from Comp.Sci but Miriam is an honest-to good electrical engineer, working on improving big-ass electrical generators for a hydroelectric powerplant here in Norway.
Due to an abundance of idiots though, 3 of them post under gender-neutral nicknames, I can't blame them. (for similar reasons, forget about pics or any more spesifics, if they want to out themselves they can do it themselves, I won't.)
Are you saying that foreign investments are somehow bad ? Even if the investor very carefully follows all the rules-of-play setup by that nations government ? That makes zero sense, infact most countries (including the USA) WELCOMES investments. I have several, for example.
And I also most definitely try to change your laws. I would like you to cancel the DMCA, adopt a less agressive foreign policy, agressively push science forward on renewable energies, adopt universal healthcare, and tons and tons of other changes, small and large. I openly argue my opinion, in the hope that someone will listen. Are you saying that foreigners should refrain from having an opinion on US law, or refrain from discussing it openly ?
I, both openly and secretly work to undermine and indeed utterly destroy "customs" which I consider wrong. These include the sexual mutilation of young females, the refusal to allow adult, consenting human beings to have sex with whomever they damn well please, punishment or inacceptance of people with the wrong beliefs, and a large collection of other bullshit.
Are you saying we should refrain from having an opinion, or refrain from stating it, or refrain from DOING something when we see injustice, if that injustice is on the other side of an imaginary object named a "border" ?
What's so magical about a "border" anyway ? A "country" is a human construct. I don't see a border as carrying any moral or ethical weight. I don't see that the right thing to do if my neighbour is suffering is any different if there's a border between us or not.
I'm all with you in respecting people, though. And the learning part, not only the language, but a lot more too. It's easy to critizise what you do not understand. One should always strive to *understand* what's really going on, rather than resort to knee-jerk reactions.
But it's not that simple, it never is in law. First you need a legal definition of "enemy", which ain't all that trivial at all.
Second, you need one for "aid and comfort".
Would you agree that Osama bin Laden is an "enemy of the United States" ? If he is ever captured, are jailworkers that give him stuff like food, water and blankets guilty of "treason" ? They obviously -are- giving him aid and comfort....
It's sort of a chicken-and-egg thing. The internet is useful for more than sending email and reading web-pages, but many of the other applications require either always-on-unmetered or reasonable-bandwith or both.
Video-conferencing is cool for grandmothers who live to far away to visit often. (my kids have grandparents in Germany, for example)
Vo-ip makes communicating with people abroad cheap, infact in many cases free.
TV-on-demand over IP is like owning a monster-TIVO.