You could. But since we're throwing out the idea of a backlight, wouldn't it make more sense to use a photovoltaic of some sort? There's flexible/thin ones being made that could easily provide enough power for an e-ink display, especially when coupled with a capacitor to store the power.
The real hassle isn't in powering the display. It's not even in having a wireless receiver for what to show on the screen. It's in the input device. It requires a *lot* more power to transmit wirelessly than it does to receive, not to mention the power it would take to actually run a capacitive or resistive touch screen.
For mens' clothing, no, not really, as it's not something I shop for. If you're looking for womens' clothing, when I shop at a store that's part of a chain I usually go to Tall Girl (known as Long Tall Sally in the US, I think), and have had some luck at stores that are part of the Reitman's empire as well. For shoes, you may luck out at a store like Naturalizer (not sure if they do business in the states) as they do carry some of the better brands in addition to the low end stuff, but I usually go to a small privately owned non-chain store that's outside of the city, because they carry a lot of good brands from Europe that you don't usually see here in Canada.
Sorry:/ Going to a box store is usually anathema to the goal of wanting a quality product.
I won't touch Dell's consumer line, but that's largely due to the lack of matte screens in the consumer line. FWIW, I have a Vostro V130n (the version that came with Ubuntu preinstalled) that's a year and a half old, which is still going strong. I will find out if they're still as good, because my mother's new computer is a Vostro 3360, but so far she says she's very happy with it.
Dell seems to trust their build quality. They're still offering 1 year NBD onsite hardware support on even the entry level bottom tier Vostro laptops. If they can offer that on a $350 laptop and still turn a profit they must have a pretty low fail rate.
I work somewhere where I'm paid enough to be able to afford $2000/mo in rent, in addition to payments on a new car and still live comfortably. I still think that Apple's products are overpriced for what you get. They certainly are good quality, but I don't abuse my laptop and have had nothing but good luck with Dell's build quality on their recent stuff. It says something that you can get a $400 laptop from their business line and it includes 1 year of NBD onsite support. I'm typing this on the 13" ultraportable I paid $430 for from Dell more than a year and a half ago, and it's still working as well as the day I bought it. I don't see any point in replacing it until the battery kicks the bucket but it's still good for about the same time as it was when I bought it.
Same story with my cell phone, btw. While I could buy an iPhone, or a One X, or a GS3 if I wanted to, I went with a One V instead. It was $150 without a contract, and is plenty for what I actually use it for. I don't need a quad core processor with 2GB of RAM in my cell phone when all I do with it is listen to FM radio, check e-mail, check wikipedia from time to time, watch Netflix, and maybe play the occasional tower defense game, so why would I spend 4x as much on the phone or let myself get tied into a long-term contract where I'm paying more than I need to for service?
As a general rule, the only times I spend money on the higher end product is in food, clothing and shoes. Food because it's better for my health, and clothing/shoes because it's a false economy buying the cheaper product: higher quality clothes last a *lot* longer than the cheap stuff and end up costing less in the long run (and no, by "high end clothing" I do not mean brands that treat their customers as billboards). When it comes to consumer electronics, it almost never pays off to buy the expensive product, especially not with the pace that the technology is advancing.
Essentially, what I'm saying is that there's 3 classes of consumers. There's the people who genuinely can't afford a higher end product, there's the people for whom the more expensive product is a status symbol, and there's the people who search the best economy which may or may not mean the more expensive option. You are assuming the person you're replying to fits into the first category when they could easily fit into the third.
In good hands, the "cheap piece of plastic" can be made to last. My mother just retired her Dell laptop... it was an Inspiron 1525 that she bought in 2008, and the main reason for replacing it was that the hard drive was failing. The system itself is fine, and with a replacement hard drive it could be convinced to last another few years, but she saw my ultraportable and decided she wanted a new one while she could still get Windows 7 on it.
$500 once every 5 years is good economy, IMO. It puts the laptop in the category where I don't really cry if I have to replace it every year, and everything beyond that is gravy.
WD Caviar Green 3TB were on sale at NewEgg over the xmas holiday, and could have been picked up for $120... the price has gone up to $150 for them though. I'm sure if you shop around you can find different drives for less, or you could get 2.5TB or 2TB drives to make the budget. The point wasn't so much about building a 6TB NAS device for that price as it was that SSD's are *way* overpriced when it comes to large amounts of storage.:)
Ultimately, it was slightly fudging the numbers. If you shopped around and were willing to compromise on quality, you could do what I described for just over $400, but you might have to settle for a smaller SSD than 60GB, and a low quality NAS enclosure.
for that same $400 you spent, I was able to get a 60GB SSD for my desktop, and a diskless gigabit NAS drive with a pair of 3TB mechanical drives.....
SSD's are nowhere near cheap enough to use for mass storage. They're fine for installing your OS on, but if you're archiving large amounts of data (say a BluRay/DVD collection, or a CD collection in FLAC) they're overkill.
Most folks who don't work at a desk either work in a fixed place (such as a cashier), or have *some* way to phone in to a control center (walkie-talkie, pager, company-provided cell phone, etc). Even if you don't have that, such as working on a factory floor, there's still the option of using the overhead page system to call you in to a manager's office to take an important call.
Having a personal cell phone is certainly a convenience, but it's not a necessity. And banning personal cell phones most certainly does *not* preclude having a company cell phone. Most companies are (rightly) worried about your productivity when you're on the clock. Allowing smart phones doesn't necessarily mean that peoples' productivity will drop, but the adage says, give an inch they'll take a mile. *some* (not all) folks will take permission to have a cell phone with them as permission to spend their days reading twitter, facebook, and playing little flash games. They're the ones screwing it up for everybody.
My experience, btw, with companies that ban cell phones is that as long as it isn't a disruptive influence you're fine. The rule is on the books, but most reasonable managers won't complain if your phone is at your desk (or in a pocket or bag or whatever), as long as you're not actually *using* it, and are getting your work done. That goes for having worked at Dell, HP/Compaq, federal government, and my current job with Ma Bell.
They pay you to work, not to sit at your desk playing farmville or tower defense on your cell phone.
My office has noticed a genuine drop in the quality and quantity of work that gets done by folks who screw around with their cell phones when they're supposed to be working, and has banned them at your desks. Put it on stun, and put it in a drawer. On your own time (breaks/lunches), it's allowed to come out, but as a courtesy to other people who *are* supposed to be working, they ask that any phone calls/whatever you make be done in the hall, lunch room, or outside.
How is that intrusive, or corporate feudalism?
And for any emergencies, I have a company-provided e-mail which can be used, and I have a desk phone which people can call.
They tend to be a lot better value than the high end games, too. I don't really feel all that bad if I spent $10 on an indie title and it turns out to be a dud, but if I spent $60 on a top tier title and it ends up sucking, there'll be hell to pay. And for *most* of the indie games on Steam, $10 is on the high end of pricing. A lot of the indie games on Steam are well worth the price they're charging, and then some.
Data is nowhere near that cheap in Canada, though... a quick check reveals that the big 3 providers price it at $25/mo for 500MB. One of them has a $30/mo for 1GB price point as well. That's on their prepaid plans.
By contrast, my post-paid cell plan has unmetered minutes from 5pm-8am, 250 daytime minutes, unlimited incoming minutes, unlimited long distance, call display/voicemail/international SMS included, and 6GB of data for $60/mo. If you work normal business hours (which I do), that 5pm unlimited minutes is effectively unlimited minutes as you're not using it during the day, and so that 6GB of data gets used for stuff like Netflix instead.:) And by Canadian standards, that's an incredibly good deal: about the only way to get a better plan is to switch to one of the providers that doesn't have coverage outside of major cities.
You can do it with Koodo, but it works out to a little more than he's claiming... $20/mo for the base plan, yes, but then you have to add on the data usage on the flex data plan, and that adds another $20/mo for 1GB or $30/mo for 3GB. At the end of the day, you'd be better off just buying their $50/mo unlimited minutes plan (local & long distance, call display, voicemail and SMS/MMS included) rather than futzing around with VOIP, and if you want data for other stuff, spend the extra $6/mo to get 2GB of data on their current promotional plan. (which is functionally the same as Virgin and Fido's promotional plans). Or if you're in a big city where they have service, go with Wind or Mobilicity, who offer unlimited everything at that price point.
If you're going to go that route, you can get a pay-as-you-go phone from a carrier with a monthly data topper. When you have the monthly data add-on, you don't need to keep renewing the minutes to keep the phone alive, because the data activity/money keeps the account active. Even then, though, you're looking at $25 for 500MB fo data from the big 3 (their prices are all the same at that price point). Telus has a $30 for 1GB price point as well, but the other two don't match it. The network *will* handle a VOIP line (I've used VOIP on Telus/Koodo), but it works out to about 500kB/minute, so while that 1GB will buy you about 2000 minutes if all you do is talk on VOIP, it's unlikely that you'd actually get that much talk out of it, as you'd use the data for other stuff. I looked at it as an option a couple of years ago and decided that it wasn't worth the hassle: for $30/mo you can get a phone with 5pm unlimited evenings/weekends and a small amount of data for email/social network, and if you work normal hours that's effectively unlimited talk.
2. US users in particular are going to get gouged deeply if they try to use mobile data to save on POTS/LDD charges.
That's going to happen in Canada, too. Most people who have a cell phone with enough data where this would actually be feasible to use it as a cell phone (instead of on wifi) have enough local minutes that it wouldn't really serve any point at all. My own plan, for example, has effectively unlimited minutes because it's unmetered from 5pm-8am and I rarely, if ever, use it while I'm at work.
You *might* be able to use it to save on domestic long distance because the 3 major carriers don't include domestic long distance in their plans, but all of the fight brands and startups do so it's of limited use there, and on international long distance (assuming they'll let you terminate a call internationally for free), but how many people make international calls on their cell phone?
You don't... but you could get a catfish or other predator to keep the population down... Some types of catfish will eat the babies when they're born without being big enough to eat the adults, for example.
More likely, the phrase was originally "countless numbers of times", which is a proper english expression, and on proofreading he double clicked "numbers" and pressed delete, forgetting about the "of" that was there.
He's asking about storing his digital media... not just a bunch of photographs, but music and movies as well.
I have no idea what's in your collection, but when I converted my CD collection to FLAC for storage on the NAS (and streaming to the stereo), I ended up with over 300GB of files. When I converted my DVD collection to MKV/h.264, I ended up with over a terabyte.
While I appreciate the suggestion and the point you're trying to make, I have a hard time believing that Dropbox would be feasible for nearly 1.5TB of data.
The Synology boxes tend to be more expensive than most folks are willing to spend. I've had good results with a Buffalo LinkStation Duo, which was a lot cheaper than the Synology. Buy the one with no hard drives in it, and put your own drives in it for even cheaper (if you happen to have the drive lying around).
Other than that, though, I totally agree with you. Get a consumer NAS device rather than trying to roll your own. It'll use less electricity, and for somebody who admits openly that he's not comfortable with the techie side of things, it'll be a lot less headache.
Perhaps, but he does have a point. The US does spent a *ton* of money on the military, and that's a lot of money that wouldn't need to be spent if the US would learn a little diplomacy. The "war on drugs" is a war that can never be won and is a giant clusterfuck of wasted money, and speaking as somebody who used to travel a *lot* in the US, I haven't entered your country at all since 2004 because I don't like the way that travellers are treated: that money has instead been spent in Europe and the Caribbean. While my own dollars are a drop in the bucket compared to overall income, I'm far from the only person who feels this way, and it is making a difference to the US economy.
In a perfect world, we'd be able to trust the police to do their jobs without prejudice or malice. In some parts of the world, that's already the case.
The GP could be in one of those parts of the world, and may not realize that in other parts of the world bribery is the standard operating procedure, and people are presumed guilty until proven otherwise (usually by means of the appropriate bribe). In this country for example, a man refusing to speak with police, evading them, and using a body double to confuse them while skipping the border would be considered an admission of guilt. It's a crime in and of itself, in the form of obstruction of justice, regardless of whether he's guilty of the murder in question, and would land him in prison on its own.
I can give him the benefit of the doubt: though I've never been to Belize I have been to countries in that part of the world and they tend more towards the bribery side of the equation (though some of them are notable exceptions). It's still difficult not to judge him by the norms of the culture I grew up in, though.
Err...you know, they do sell large format, HD monitors out there, with no tuner, etc.
They can't actually call it a TV if it doesn't have a tuner, though, which means that they're harder to lay your hands on, and at least in my experience more expensive than an equivalently sized "TV" despite having *less* electronics. Supply and Demand.:)
Besides which, the tuner is very useful to folks like me who'd rather buy a pair of rabbit ears than pay a monthly tithe to a cable company. It's also really not that difficult to connect it back into the A/V system. I put the TV on an HDMI input from the A/V system and plug my BluRay, etc. into the A/V system by HDMI. I plug the optical audio out from the TV into a different input on the HDMI. When I want to watch an OTA broadcast, I switch input on the TV and set the A/V system to the input from the TV. When I want to watch something else, I switch back to the input from the A/V system and use it as a switch.
And if *that* is too difficult for people, then buy a TV with more than one HDMI input, and just run optical audio out to the A/V system. Use the TV as the input switch. A reasonably high end TV will pass the HD audio through the optical without breaking the HDMI authentication chain. The only reason I'm not doing it that way myself is that the TV only has 3 HDMI inputs while the stereo has 6.
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You could. But since we're throwing out the idea of a backlight, wouldn't it make more sense to use a photovoltaic of some sort? There's flexible/thin ones being made that could easily provide enough power for an e-ink display, especially when coupled with a capacitor to store the power.
The real hassle isn't in powering the display. It's not even in having a wireless receiver for what to show on the screen. It's in the input device. It requires a *lot* more power to transmit wirelessly than it does to receive, not to mention the power it would take to actually run a capacitive or resistive touch screen.
For mens' clothing, no, not really, as it's not something I shop for. If you're looking for womens' clothing, when I shop at a store that's part of a chain I usually go to Tall Girl (known as Long Tall Sally in the US, I think), and have had some luck at stores that are part of the Reitman's empire as well. For shoes, you may luck out at a store like Naturalizer (not sure if they do business in the states) as they do carry some of the better brands in addition to the low end stuff, but I usually go to a small privately owned non-chain store that's outside of the city, because they carry a lot of good brands from Europe that you don't usually see here in Canada.
Sorry :/ Going to a box store is usually anathema to the goal of wanting a quality product.
I won't touch Dell's consumer line, but that's largely due to the lack of matte screens in the consumer line. FWIW, I have a Vostro V130n (the version that came with Ubuntu preinstalled) that's a year and a half old, which is still going strong. I will find out if they're still as good, because my mother's new computer is a Vostro 3360, but so far she says she's very happy with it.
Dell seems to trust their build quality. They're still offering 1 year NBD onsite hardware support on even the entry level bottom tier Vostro laptops. If they can offer that on a $350 laptop and still turn a profit they must have a pretty low fail rate.
I work somewhere where I'm paid enough to be able to afford $2000/mo in rent, in addition to payments on a new car and still live comfortably. I still think that Apple's products are overpriced for what you get. They certainly are good quality, but I don't abuse my laptop and have had nothing but good luck with Dell's build quality on their recent stuff. It says something that you can get a $400 laptop from their business line and it includes 1 year of NBD onsite support. I'm typing this on the 13" ultraportable I paid $430 for from Dell more than a year and a half ago, and it's still working as well as the day I bought it. I don't see any point in replacing it until the battery kicks the bucket but it's still good for about the same time as it was when I bought it.
Same story with my cell phone, btw. While I could buy an iPhone, or a One X, or a GS3 if I wanted to, I went with a One V instead. It was $150 without a contract, and is plenty for what I actually use it for. I don't need a quad core processor with 2GB of RAM in my cell phone when all I do with it is listen to FM radio, check e-mail, check wikipedia from time to time, watch Netflix, and maybe play the occasional tower defense game, so why would I spend 4x as much on the phone or let myself get tied into a long-term contract where I'm paying more than I need to for service?
As a general rule, the only times I spend money on the higher end product is in food, clothing and shoes. Food because it's better for my health, and clothing/shoes because it's a false economy buying the cheaper product: higher quality clothes last a *lot* longer than the cheap stuff and end up costing less in the long run (and no, by "high end clothing" I do not mean brands that treat their customers as billboards). When it comes to consumer electronics, it almost never pays off to buy the expensive product, especially not with the pace that the technology is advancing.
Essentially, what I'm saying is that there's 3 classes of consumers. There's the people who genuinely can't afford a higher end product, there's the people for whom the more expensive product is a status symbol, and there's the people who search the best economy which may or may not mean the more expensive option. You are assuming the person you're replying to fits into the first category when they could easily fit into the third.
In good hands, the "cheap piece of plastic" can be made to last. My mother just retired her Dell laptop... it was an Inspiron 1525 that she bought in 2008, and the main reason for replacing it was that the hard drive was failing. The system itself is fine, and with a replacement hard drive it could be convinced to last another few years, but she saw my ultraportable and decided she wanted a new one while she could still get Windows 7 on it.
$500 once every 5 years is good economy, IMO. It puts the laptop in the category where I don't really cry if I have to replace it every year, and everything beyond that is gravy.
WD Caviar Green 3TB were on sale at NewEgg over the xmas holiday, and could have been picked up for $120... the price has gone up to $150 for them though. I'm sure if you shop around you can find different drives for less, or you could get 2.5TB or 2TB drives to make the budget. The point wasn't so much about building a 6TB NAS device for that price as it was that SSD's are *way* overpriced when it comes to large amounts of storage. :)
Ultimately, it was slightly fudging the numbers. If you shopped around and were willing to compromise on quality, you could do what I described for just over $400, but you might have to settle for a smaller SSD than 60GB, and a low quality NAS enclosure.
for that same $400 you spent, I was able to get a 60GB SSD for my desktop, and a diskless gigabit NAS drive with a pair of 3TB mechanical drives.....
SSD's are nowhere near cheap enough to use for mass storage. They're fine for installing your OS on, but if you're archiving large amounts of data (say a BluRay/DVD collection, or a CD collection in FLAC) they're overkill.
Most folks who don't work at a desk either work in a fixed place (such as a cashier), or have *some* way to phone in to a control center (walkie-talkie, pager, company-provided cell phone, etc). Even if you don't have that, such as working on a factory floor, there's still the option of using the overhead page system to call you in to a manager's office to take an important call.
Having a personal cell phone is certainly a convenience, but it's not a necessity. And banning personal cell phones most certainly does *not* preclude having a company cell phone. Most companies are (rightly) worried about your productivity when you're on the clock. Allowing smart phones doesn't necessarily mean that peoples' productivity will drop, but the adage says, give an inch they'll take a mile. *some* (not all) folks will take permission to have a cell phone with them as permission to spend their days reading twitter, facebook, and playing little flash games. They're the ones screwing it up for everybody.
My experience, btw, with companies that ban cell phones is that as long as it isn't a disruptive influence you're fine. The rule is on the books, but most reasonable managers won't complain if your phone is at your desk (or in a pocket or bag or whatever), as long as you're not actually *using* it, and are getting your work done. That goes for having worked at Dell, HP/Compaq, federal government, and my current job with Ma Bell.
They pay you to work, not to sit at your desk playing farmville or tower defense on your cell phone.
My office has noticed a genuine drop in the quality and quantity of work that gets done by folks who screw around with their cell phones when they're supposed to be working, and has banned them at your desks. Put it on stun, and put it in a drawer. On your own time (breaks/lunches), it's allowed to come out, but as a courtesy to other people who *are* supposed to be working, they ask that any phone calls/whatever you make be done in the hall, lunch room, or outside.
How is that intrusive, or corporate feudalism?
And for any emergencies, I have a company-provided e-mail which can be used, and I have a desk phone which people can call.
They tend to be a lot better value than the high end games, too. I don't really feel all that bad if I spent $10 on an indie title and it turns out to be a dud, but if I spent $60 on a top tier title and it ends up sucking, there'll be hell to pay. And for *most* of the indie games on Steam, $10 is on the high end of pricing. A lot of the indie games on Steam are well worth the price they're charging, and then some.
International minutes, maybe? But given a choice between "free" with Facebook and calling card rates, I'll take the calling card.
Data is nowhere near that cheap in Canada, though... a quick check reveals that the big 3 providers price it at $25/mo for 500MB. One of them has a $30/mo for 1GB price point as well. That's on their prepaid plans.
By contrast, my post-paid cell plan has unmetered minutes from 5pm-8am, 250 daytime minutes, unlimited incoming minutes, unlimited long distance, call display/voicemail/international SMS included, and 6GB of data for $60/mo. If you work normal business hours (which I do), that 5pm unlimited minutes is effectively unlimited minutes as you're not using it during the day, and so that 6GB of data gets used for stuff like Netflix instead. :) And by Canadian standards, that's an incredibly good deal: about the only way to get a better plan is to switch to one of the providers that doesn't have coverage outside of major cities.
You can do it with Koodo, but it works out to a little more than he's claiming... $20/mo for the base plan, yes, but then you have to add on the data usage on the flex data plan, and that adds another $20/mo for 1GB or $30/mo for 3GB. At the end of the day, you'd be better off just buying their $50/mo unlimited minutes plan (local & long distance, call display, voicemail and SMS/MMS included) rather than futzing around with VOIP, and if you want data for other stuff, spend the extra $6/mo to get 2GB of data on their current promotional plan. (which is functionally the same as Virgin and Fido's promotional plans). Or if you're in a big city where they have service, go with Wind or Mobilicity, who offer unlimited everything at that price point.
If you're going to go that route, you can get a pay-as-you-go phone from a carrier with a monthly data topper. When you have the monthly data add-on, you don't need to keep renewing the minutes to keep the phone alive, because the data activity/money keeps the account active. Even then, though, you're looking at $25 for 500MB fo data from the big 3 (their prices are all the same at that price point). Telus has a $30 for 1GB price point as well, but the other two don't match it. The network *will* handle a VOIP line (I've used VOIP on Telus/Koodo), but it works out to about 500kB/minute, so while that 1GB will buy you about 2000 minutes if all you do is talk on VOIP, it's unlikely that you'd actually get that much talk out of it, as you'd use the data for other stuff. I looked at it as an option a couple of years ago and decided that it wasn't worth the hassle: for $30/mo you can get a phone with 5pm unlimited evenings/weekends and a small amount of data for email/social network, and if you work normal hours that's effectively unlimited talk.
2. US users in particular are going to get gouged deeply if they try to use mobile data to save on POTS/LDD charges.
That's going to happen in Canada, too. Most people who have a cell phone with enough data where this would actually be feasible to use it as a cell phone (instead of on wifi) have enough local minutes that it wouldn't really serve any point at all. My own plan, for example, has effectively unlimited minutes because it's unmetered from 5pm-8am and I rarely, if ever, use it while I'm at work.
You *might* be able to use it to save on domestic long distance because the 3 major carriers don't include domestic long distance in their plans, but all of the fight brands and startups do so it's of limited use there, and on international long distance (assuming they'll let you terminate a call internationally for free), but how many people make international calls on their cell phone?
You don't... but you could get a catfish or other predator to keep the population down... Some types of catfish will eat the babies when they're born without being big enough to eat the adults, for example.
Don't worry, they're safe. Many American sports cars are using suspension technology that was developped by the Romans.
More likely, the phrase was originally "countless numbers of times", which is a proper english expression, and on proofreading he double clicked "numbers" and pressed delete, forgetting about the "of" that was there.
I've done that a times. :)
Given that every video on the planet is copyrighted, I doubt they'll go that far.... It seems like it might hurt their business model.
He's asking about storing his digital media... not just a bunch of photographs, but music and movies as well.
I have no idea what's in your collection, but when I converted my CD collection to FLAC for storage on the NAS (and streaming to the stereo), I ended up with over 300GB of files. When I converted my DVD collection to MKV/h.264, I ended up with over a terabyte.
While I appreciate the suggestion and the point you're trying to make, I have a hard time believing that Dropbox would be feasible for nearly 1.5TB of data.
The Synology boxes tend to be more expensive than most folks are willing to spend. I've had good results with a Buffalo LinkStation Duo, which was a lot cheaper than the Synology. Buy the one with no hard drives in it, and put your own drives in it for even cheaper (if you happen to have the drive lying around).
Other than that, though, I totally agree with you. Get a consumer NAS device rather than trying to roll your own. It'll use less electricity, and for somebody who admits openly that he's not comfortable with the techie side of things, it'll be a lot less headache.
You know, the part that you cut out with the ellipsis answers your question....
If you insist I can use an entirely FPGA-based design that is 100% F/OSS.
Perhaps, but he does have a point. The US does spent a *ton* of money on the military, and that's a lot of money that wouldn't need to be spent if the US would learn a little diplomacy. The "war on drugs" is a war that can never be won and is a giant clusterfuck of wasted money, and speaking as somebody who used to travel a *lot* in the US, I haven't entered your country at all since 2004 because I don't like the way that travellers are treated: that money has instead been spent in Europe and the Caribbean. While my own dollars are a drop in the bucket compared to overall income, I'm far from the only person who feels this way, and it is making a difference to the US economy.
In a perfect world, we'd be able to trust the police to do their jobs without prejudice or malice. In some parts of the world, that's already the case.
The GP could be in one of those parts of the world, and may not realize that in other parts of the world bribery is the standard operating procedure, and people are presumed guilty until proven otherwise (usually by means of the appropriate bribe). In this country for example, a man refusing to speak with police, evading them, and using a body double to confuse them while skipping the border would be considered an admission of guilt. It's a crime in and of itself, in the form of obstruction of justice, regardless of whether he's guilty of the murder in question, and would land him in prison on its own.
I can give him the benefit of the doubt: though I've never been to Belize I have been to countries in that part of the world and they tend more towards the bribery side of the equation (though some of them are notable exceptions). It's still difficult not to judge him by the norms of the culture I grew up in, though.
The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers.
-- Shakespeare, Henry VI part 2, Act 4, Scene 2
Err...you know, they do sell large format, HD monitors out there, with no tuner, etc.
They can't actually call it a TV if it doesn't have a tuner, though, which means that they're harder to lay your hands on, and at least in my experience more expensive than an equivalently sized "TV" despite having *less* electronics. Supply and Demand. :)
Besides which, the tuner is very useful to folks like me who'd rather buy a pair of rabbit ears than pay a monthly tithe to a cable company. It's also really not that difficult to connect it back into the A/V system. I put the TV on an HDMI input from the A/V system and plug my BluRay, etc. into the A/V system by HDMI. I plug the optical audio out from the TV into a different input on the HDMI. When I want to watch an OTA broadcast, I switch input on the TV and set the A/V system to the input from the TV. When I want to watch something else, I switch back to the input from the A/V system and use it as a switch.
And if *that* is too difficult for people, then buy a TV with more than one HDMI input, and just run optical audio out to the A/V system. Use the TV as the input switch. A reasonably high end TV will pass the HD audio through the optical without breaking the HDMI authentication chain. The only reason I'm not doing it that way myself is that the TV only has 3 HDMI inputs while the stereo has 6.