where any evidence you can produce from "them" (nasa, government, media) is invalid because it's part of the conspiracy.
I hear you, but that was my point. Don't produce evidence from "them", produce your evidence by looking at their evidence, using your brain, and pointing out why their evidence is so much shit.
I mean, I have yet to see any real psuedo-evidence that *makes actual sense*, much less holds up under the weight of actually looking at it and using your brain. It doesn't take hard scientific evidence to debunk 99% of the BS out there, just look at it and think for 5 seconds and say "hey, this is total nonsense because..." and there you go.
My point is that most of the stuff that gets onto these shows doesn't hold up under *rational thought*, much less under any kind of inquiry. People can only believe them because they didn't actually stop to *think* about them. They simply accepted them as fact, and the thought process got bypassed entirely. Most of the time, if you can make them stop and actually think about it, it solves itself. Assuming they're capable of thought, which may not be the case, I admit.
Ahh, but what else was the car videophone capable of doing?
Nothing, because it didn't actually exist. It was a joke, playing on old 60's spy movies and such. The video phone was the one portrayed in *movies*, not a real device. And then the real device from 30's years later was noticably not as cool looking. That was the joke. Laugh, it's funny.;)
But I want a gaming rig that will smoke the hell out of other people with it's blazingly fast processor power, not it's stylish looks.
Looks are fine, and I got nothing against case modding. Hell, I painted my Pentium 100 PC's case neon orange back in 1995 or 1996, before weird cases became popular. That's beside the point. A gaming rig is meant for high powered, speed processing for lightning fast 3d gaming. Anything else is just extraneous.
And a pre-bought modded case, stamped out on a line, kinda strikes me as lame as hell. The point of case modding is to make something impressive. Seeing 100 copies of the same thing is no longer impressive. Okay, I might buy parts and mod it, or I might buy a modded case and put it together with some of my own addons, or I might even have somebody else do a custom paint job for me because I lack that kind of expertise or artistic ability... but these are more timesavers than anything else. Buying a whole pre-modded system out of a catalog is just silly and not l33t.:-P
if the moon is new when it's closer to the sun than the earth, then the new moon should never be in the night sky. because it's only in the day sky. because it's closer to the sun than the earth. that seems to be what you're saying. ??
The Earth rotates. All phases of the moon can be seen in both the day and the night sky, depending on where you are on the planet. Even full moon can be seen in the day, for a short period in the right place. They're just on opposite horizons in that circumstance.
But I never said the moon was close to the sun in the sky, I was speaking about their relative position in the cosmos. The Moon's plane of orbit around the Earth doesn't exactly match the Earth's plane of orbit around the sun. It varies by a large amount. Sometimes, it's quite possible to see a new moon at night, when the angles of orbit are different enough and the positions are night. And yes, you can see it, because light from the Earth (all the street lamps and such) reflects off the Moon's surface and makes it bright enough to be visible to the naked eye.
Unless you had a crappy teacher in the 3rd grade- who told you that was the SHADOW OF THE EARTH on the moon- and thus you'd have the cycle of the moon exactly backwards.
Huh? The shadow of the Earth on the moon happens during a lunar eclipse. And an eclipse can only happen during a full moon, more or less. 5 seconds of thought would tell you that that idea was wrong. Plus if you'd ever actually seen a lunar eclipse (and it was one of those things that my science teachers always pointed out to all the kids), you can clearly see a curve on the shadow on the moon (not to mention a color difference due to the umbra/penumbra thing), which isn't much there on a half moon, for example.
Anyway, I see your point, but I've never encountered a teacher that stupid. I admit that maybe I'm incorrect in my assumption that everybody understands this one.
Oh, I dunno... Austin powers used it to extremely funny effect, if you were paying attention.
The 60's video phone in his car was crystal clear. The 90's video conferencing on his laptop was horrible. A bit of a subtle joke that most people didn't see, I think.
ask yourself how the shadow on the moon is produced while it goes through one "monthly" cycle and how the sun and the earth are involved.
Sun, Earth, and Moon are all, more or less, orbiting each other in nearly the same plane. The moon moves around the Earth roughly once every 28 days or so. When the moon moves to be furthest from the sun (instead of the Earth), the light reflects off of it and comes back to us on Earth, giving us Full Moon. When it moves closest to the sun, we can't see it because all the light from the sun hits the side away from us and thus isn't reflected to the Earth, and thus we get New Moon. What's so hard to understand about that?
ask yourself how the seasons come into being and what role the precession of the earth axis plays in combination with the sun
The Earth is tilted at an angle from its plane of orbit around the sun. This angle is what gives us seasons. Considered from the Northern Hemisphere, during the months of roughly June to August, it's summer. Summer means that the angle of the earth's rotation combined with its position in orbit about the Sun puts the Northern Hemisphere more directly under the sun at noon. The difference is only that of a couple hundred miles or so, compared to winter, but that's enough. The seasons get reversed in the southern hemisphere because it's on the opposite side, obviously.
Precession is the fact that, like a top, the Earth's rotation angle rotates around a circle, describing a cone if you consider the motion of the line along the axis of rotation. After a large amount of time (millions of years), the Earth will have precessed enough to, essentially, move the times in it's orbit that coincide with the seasons. And thus the seasons, slowly, gradually, move along the calendar year. After a long time, the seasons will have rotated and the southern hemisphere will get summer in June-August instead of from Dec-Feb like it does now.
Again, what's so hard to understand about that? Every schoolchild should have learned these things. I did, in like 2nd or 3rd grade.
I have a few friends that seem otherwise rational, but are fascinated with the pseudo-science.
Define fascinated... I mean, heck, I watch those shows too. I get angry at the more obvious absurdities and proceed to throw popcorn at the screen and yell loudly about how stupid these people are being. Now that's entertainment.:)
It works well if you are watching with friends around who have tendancies to believe in this sort of thing. After a while, they smarten up and start noticing the problems for themselves.
Next time, tell him you read his nonsense evidence and figured out that it was a bunch of shit that only idiots would fall for. Then proceed to show him why it's a bunch of crap. Go point by point if needed.
It's one thing to claim that you've seen another site with a bunch of debunking of the psuedo-evidence, but it's another to claim that hey, any idiot can see that this so called "evidence" is stupid. If your friend doesn't want to appear to be an idiot, then he'll go "oohh, of course" at this point.
He might still believe in the junk science after that, but at least he won't bug you about it anymore.:)
Your 1600 minutes a month is serious phone usage - way over what I'd consider the norm.
I read a study on this. I believe it said that the average usage among cell phone users in the US was something like 400+ minutes per month. However, it made a distinction between people who carry a phone for work and carry their own phone for all the time usage, and the work phones were significantly lower use than home use phones, thus dropping the average.
I use a cell phone exclusively and dropped my land line entirely. Well, after my last move, I never purchased a new land line connection, in fact. Don't need one. This is rapidly becoming the norm among 20-30 year olds in the US, actually, and starting to spread into other age groups as well. A land line is essentially a waste of money if you have a cell phone and broadband internet. This market, growing fast, is what shoots the average up there. Think of all the phone time you spend during a month. Now make it all into cell phone usage.
Re:Camera phones are silly
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Camera Phone Tips
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· Score: 2, Interesting
Mind you, if you really are from the US as other have guessed, I think I know one reason why it hasn't taken off in the same way as over here - y'all don't have a single standard to which all the providers adhere... as well we beeing screwed over by having to pay for incomming calls and messages (yes, I know this isn't true for all providers any more, but it's true for quite a lot of them). Complain all you want about GSM beeing 'french' (it ain't) or that it ain't 'free competition' between european telcos (it's as free or freeer as in the US btw - we simply have a level playing field)... and using an open, non-proprietary standard to cap it off.
Yes and no. Until about 2 years ago, you were correct. SMS messaging didn't really cross systems. Now, however, that's no longer the case. GSM is pretty danged widespread in the US now, although it still gets badmouthed. I've used GSM off and on for a long time, and while it still doesn't have total marketshare, it has almost total coverage of the country.
But mainly, a lot of providers have put relays and compatible systems and such in place, with the upshot being that text messages now nearly always get through, regardless of the system. There's still a few problems with it in a few cases, but it's universal enough that you're 99% sure the message will get to its destination.
Doesn't help, really, it's a different mindset thing. Yes, text is bigger than it was 2 years ago, but it will never be as big a deal as it is in Europe. Oh, they keep trying to push it, but the public on this side of the pond just ain't buying it. Some of the more notable attempts to push text messaging include text message only communications devices, with little flip screens and keypads in cool colors. Mainly aimed at young women, judging by the designs. This makes it be seen as a fad, and few use texting on a regular basis. Except to have the sports scores or other similar information sent to them automatically, which is about 80-85% of the text use in the US.
People in the US love to talk, and they mainly use the phone for that purpose. WAP isn't taking off too well here either, but it's relatively new to the market around here, really. It's just easier to obtain information on the go via other channels than it is to fire up a WAP browser on your phone and get it.
Cell phones are *huge* over here, but for talking, not for anything else. Believe me, if you hit any mall in the states, you'd see what I mean instantly. Every girl under 16 has a phone and a pricing plan designed for power chatting. Scary, really.
All I can think of is that you must be in the US. In Europe, I would go so far as to say that the primary use of many mobiles sold is for text messaging. I know I send far more texts than I make voice calls.
I can't speak for Japan, but I believe there's a similar situation there. I thought that the US was going the same way, but I'm prepared to be corrected on that.
Consider yourself corrected. US users just don't text message nearly as much as EU or Japanese users.
For one thing, most people don't have the patience for it over here. Either you have to use a keypad and annoying hit keys multiple times, or you have to learn to use predictive text (which is beyond most people.. I swear, I know so many people who have disabled predictive text because they couldn't figure it out...), or they don't like reading on the little tiny screen, etc, etc.
There's a whole host of reasons, but the main one is the lack of instant gratification. You send a text, you don't usually get an immediate response. But you call someone up, and it's two way. Instant gratification.
This is not to say text messages don't get used. On the contrary, they get used a heck of a lot. It's picked up about threefold since, say, 2 years ago. But the percentage is *way* below what you'd see overseas. Over there, people make more texts than they do actual calls. The percentages here in the US are about 3-4 times as many calls as texts.
The overwhelming majority of text messaging in the US is for people getting the game scores sent to their phone by some internet site, in fact.
actually, RFID can be activated without the person carring them knowing. granted, you need to be clode to the reader, but that are plenty of places to hide a reader.
Okay... a) I find it highly unlikely someone will get a reader within the 1 inch range of the RFID transmission without you actually noticing b) So what if they did? What have they suddenly gained? My RFID access card for work has a picture of me and my name on the thing in big letters. All scanning my card does is to give you a number that's associated with my name. Or you could just *read* the damned card. I don't care if people know who I am. Really. Honestly. Why would I? I'd rather they did know who I am, in fact.
If I want to be anonymous, I can take it off. But it's *really* unlikely that I'd want to be anonymous at my workplace. I can't think of any reason for that, in fact.
Seriously, would RMS be bitching so much if, instead of RFID cards they use magstripe readers instead?
I'm sure if you asked him, he'd say they're no different, but let's be honest here. RFID is the current hot topic to bitch and complain about.
Fact: There are legitimate reasons for tracking who goes in and out of a building with a hell of a lot of expensive equipment in it.
Fact: How they track this information is largely immaterial, it's a "privacy invasion" just as much with a magstripe card as it is with a RFID card as it is with a hidden camera recording everybody going in the damn door.
Fact: I don't hear anybody bitching about magstripe card entry systems, and they've been around for 50+ years, no?
Re:Photo and PIN on Cash Card / Credit Card??
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RFID MasterCard
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· Score: 1
As you've noticed, writing See ID isn't all that effective. But it can prove to be pretty funny:
http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit/
That is pretty funny, but there's one problem with that site. You see, legally, your name is whatever the hell you say it is. So it doesn't really matter what you sign your name as, it's the act of you doing the signing that makes it legally binding.
Of course, reality is different, and you could probably argue your way out of paying for something successfully that way, but that'd be pretty low.
Realistically, they don't need your signature. It's been charged to your card before you ever get the slip of paper to sign. It's not like they have to go back and put anything in the system for you to get charged for it. That slip of paper you sign goes in a box somewhere just in case you ever contest the charge. Then they can pull it out and say "then why did you sign for it, jerk off?" I've walked out of places with that signature slip before, by accident, and the charge is on my bill just the same. It's wholly unnecessary to the process of you getting charged for something, it's there in case you ever decide to fight the charge on something.
Slips get lost though, which is why most retailers have those electronic signature pads nowadays. Work is likely progressing on automatic signature discrimination, so if you've bought from that retailer before, your signature can be compared automatically and warning bells go off if they are too different.
But I've noticed that all the shady cable modem stuff I've seen has been through ComCast. I recently signed up with RoadRunner and haven't have any problems other than them forcing me to use their Cable Modem instead of my own. But they don't charge extra or give a discount for customer owned modem like my old company did, so I'm not upset too much.
Around here, they offer a "hook up your whole LAN and get a firewall too!" deal for an extra $5-10 a month, where they simply rent you a Linksys Cable/DSL Router box. I hooked up my own box instead. Still, they don't seem to mind multiple hookups using a router, is what I'm saying. They might mind me not paying them for a device which I already have, but hey, they sell the things in stores, you know?
People have some really bizarre reactions to certain numbers. There's the whole "just add the dollars" thing like you mention, which I think is just plain weird.
You think it's weird? What's weird is doing the same thing and having them correct you, wrongly. Like I added $1.49 and $1.49 and got "3 bucks" and someone next to me said, "you mean 2 bucks". Whereupon I have to give a "WTF is wrong with you" look at them, before they notice how dumb they are and correct themselves. These are reasonably smart college graduates too. It's not an inability to do simple mathematics, it's just a weird process of rounding cash that I can't understand.
Another one I've noticed in a similar vein is the "single big bill" thing.
Yeah, I've seen the same one. If you really want to reduce complaints, switch to "$73.99" or some other really odd number. Leave the.95 or.99 on there, and people won't argue with it even more. It's weird, man.
Like many other's posting today, you're stuck in the paradigm that microbroadcasters are going to intentionally broadcast "on top" of some already in-use band... and that if it weren't for the FCC's enforcement of the licensed allocation the FM and AM bands would be utter chaos. I've got some news for you...
I've got some news for you too. Transmitters "leak". A homemade transmitter tends to leak a lot. They don't stay confined to one and only one section, they spread across a chunk of spectrum. They have to, in fact, because that's how frequency modulation works. But when it goes a lot further than it's supposed to, it causes interference on neighboring channels.
Few here are concerns about jackasses who try to steal bandspace from some other station. That's a self solving problem. But poorly made transmitters that knock out a whole MHz of the spectrum at a time is not unheard of, or indeed, uncommon in pirate radio.
But I don't see why this means we need to have 50 clearchannel stations and none or very few from average Joe's.
The most stations I'm aware of, in one location, that ClearChannel owns is 12. That one I've seen personally, as they simply bought all the radio stations in the area and moved them all into the same broadcast building. The content of them all didn't really change, just the advertising schemes.
But I doubt anywhere at all has "50" channels owned by the same people (be it ClearChannel or anybody else), as there's only 100 tunable FM channels on your radio. Count 'em up.
As for Low Power licensing, I'm all for it. But I agree with the original AC poster who said that these guys are idiots, as simply having thousands of unlicensed ppl broadcasting simply won't work. If you want to get the FCC to offer cheap, low-power, licenses and regulate the max power and locations and such, then more power to you. But simply training people on how to build their own broadcasting devices and antennas and then turning them loose without instilling any kind of "good neighbor" attitude towards the airwaves is just a receipe for disaster.
It's everybody's sandbox, and everybody has to play nice in it, or it becomes a big giant mudhole.
This is Marketing 101. Low number sell better that round ones. The problem with nice, even round numbers is that they're too easy to manipulate mathematically. Two songs at $1.50 is $3.00 and everyone knows it. Two songs at $1.29 is less than that-- only $2.58-- but most people will mentally round the number to "two dollars and something". The idea is to play on people's difficulty in dealing with math and make it HARDER to figure out how much they're really spending.
Wow. I've always wondered why they do that, and that's the first explanation I've heard that actually makes sense. I have always rounded up, myself, so numbers like 1.89 would go up to 2.00, or 1.29 would go up to 1.50 or whatever. That makes the math easy, and I'm always paying less than I thought that way.
But recently, in going out with friends and such, I have personally seen people do mental math on, say, $1.79 and $1.89 and come up with "about 2 bucks". I've always had to point out that it's closer to 4 bucks than any other even number of "bucks". They were just adding the dollar amount and essentially ignoring the cents entirely. And not just one person either, but I've seen many people do this at various times, and it's always stood out in my mind as "how could this person possibly come up with that number?!?"
Arguing that people that build something like this are "stupid" because "anyone could come kick it over, here, I'll show you..." is not convincing.
No, but there do exist jerk offs in the world who will kick over your sandcastle, and complaining that these sorts of people do, in fact, exist is not very convincing either. Either you take measures to protect what you create, or stop whining so much when people kick over your sandcastle.
Since they have tools to easily undo changes, they have considered the fact of vandalism and think that's good enough for them. Well then, stop griping about it.
Making content such that anybody can change it and then complaining when somebody changes it in a way you're not happy with strikes me as pretty dang stupid, that's all. If you want to have approval of changes, then rework your system. If not, then don't. But don't expect people to conform to your standards unless you enforce them in some manner. Some people are bullies who will kick over your sandcastles. Deal with it.
Slashdot Mirror
I really don't want people yelling out "Look out for the rocket!" during my flights, personally.
where any evidence you can produce from "them" (nasa, government, media) is invalid because it's part of the conspiracy.
I hear you, but that was my point. Don't produce evidence from "them", produce your evidence by looking at their evidence, using your brain, and pointing out why their evidence is so much shit.
I mean, I have yet to see any real psuedo-evidence that *makes actual sense*, much less holds up under the weight of actually looking at it and using your brain. It doesn't take hard scientific evidence to debunk 99% of the BS out there, just look at it and think for 5 seconds and say "hey, this is total nonsense because..." and there you go.
My point is that most of the stuff that gets onto these shows doesn't hold up under *rational thought*, much less under any kind of inquiry. People can only believe them because they didn't actually stop to *think* about them. They simply accepted them as fact, and the thought process got bypassed entirely. Most of the time, if you can make them stop and actually think about it, it solves itself. Assuming they're capable of thought, which may not be the case, I admit.
Ahh, but what else was the car videophone capable of doing?
;)
Nothing, because it didn't actually exist. It was a joke, playing on old 60's spy movies and such. The video phone was the one portrayed in *movies*, not a real device. And then the real device from 30's years later was noticably not as cool looking. That was the joke. Laugh, it's funny.
...and it never crashes.
;)
You don't know a lot of "gamer nerds" or overclockers, do you?
But I want a gaming rig that will smoke the hell out of other people with it's blazingly fast processor power, not it's stylish looks.
:-P
Looks are fine, and I got nothing against case modding. Hell, I painted my Pentium 100 PC's case neon orange back in 1995 or 1996, before weird cases became popular. That's beside the point. A gaming rig is meant for high powered, speed processing for lightning fast 3d gaming. Anything else is just extraneous.
And a pre-bought modded case, stamped out on a line, kinda strikes me as lame as hell. The point of case modding is to make something impressive. Seeing 100 copies of the same thing is no longer impressive. Okay, I might buy parts and mod it, or I might buy a modded case and put it together with some of my own addons, or I might even have somebody else do a custom paint job for me because I lack that kind of expertise or artistic ability... but these are more timesavers than anything else. Buying a whole pre-modded system out of a catalog is just silly and not l33t.
if the moon is new when it's closer to the sun than the earth, then the new moon should never be in the night sky. because it's only in the day sky. because it's closer to the sun than the earth. that seems to be what you're saying. ??
The Earth rotates. All phases of the moon can be seen in both the day and the night sky, depending on where you are on the planet. Even full moon can be seen in the day, for a short period in the right place. They're just on opposite horizons in that circumstance.
But I never said the moon was close to the sun in the sky, I was speaking about their relative position in the cosmos. The Moon's plane of orbit around the Earth doesn't exactly match the Earth's plane of orbit around the sun. It varies by a large amount. Sometimes, it's quite possible to see a new moon at night, when the angles of orbit are different enough and the positions are night. And yes, you can see it, because light from the Earth (all the street lamps and such) reflects off the Moon's surface and makes it bright enough to be visible to the naked eye.
Unless you had a crappy teacher in the 3rd grade- who told you that was the SHADOW OF THE EARTH on the moon- and thus you'd have the cycle of the moon exactly backwards.
Huh? The shadow of the Earth on the moon happens during a lunar eclipse. And an eclipse can only happen during a full moon, more or less. 5 seconds of thought would tell you that that idea was wrong. Plus if you'd ever actually seen a lunar eclipse (and it was one of those things that my science teachers always pointed out to all the kids), you can clearly see a curve on the shadow on the moon (not to mention a color difference due to the umbra/penumbra thing), which isn't much there on a half moon, for example.
Anyway, I see your point, but I've never encountered a teacher that stupid. I admit that maybe I'm incorrect in my assumption that everybody understands this one.
Oh, I agree, in most cases it won't work. But in nearly all cases, they stop pointing out their stupid belief to you, and that's almost as good. :)
or seeing the real quality of video conferencing
Oh, I dunno... Austin powers used it to extremely funny effect, if you were paying attention.
The 60's video phone in his car was crystal clear. The 90's video conferencing on his laptop was horrible. A bit of a subtle joke that most people didn't see, I think.
Okay... I'll bite:
ask yourself how the shadow on the moon is produced while it goes through one "monthly" cycle and how the sun and the earth are involved.
Sun, Earth, and Moon are all, more or less, orbiting each other in nearly the same plane. The moon moves around the Earth roughly once every 28 days or so. When the moon moves to be furthest from the sun (instead of the Earth), the light reflects off of it and comes back to us on Earth, giving us Full Moon. When it moves closest to the sun, we can't see it because all the light from the sun hits the side away from us and thus isn't reflected to the Earth, and thus we get New Moon. What's so hard to understand about that?
ask yourself how the seasons come into being and what role the precession of the earth axis plays in combination with the sun
The Earth is tilted at an angle from its plane of orbit around the sun. This angle is what gives us seasons. Considered from the Northern Hemisphere, during the months of roughly June to August, it's summer. Summer means that the angle of the earth's rotation combined with its position in orbit about the Sun puts the Northern Hemisphere more directly under the sun at noon. The difference is only that of a couple hundred miles or so, compared to winter, but that's enough. The seasons get reversed in the southern hemisphere because it's on the opposite side, obviously.
Precession is the fact that, like a top, the Earth's rotation angle rotates around a circle, describing a cone if you consider the motion of the line along the axis of rotation. After a large amount of time (millions of years), the Earth will have precessed enough to, essentially, move the times in it's orbit that coincide with the seasons. And thus the seasons, slowly, gradually, move along the calendar year. After a long time, the seasons will have rotated and the southern hemisphere will get summer in June-August instead of from Dec-Feb like it does now.
Again, what's so hard to understand about that? Every schoolchild should have learned these things. I did, in like 2nd or 3rd grade.
I have a few friends that seem otherwise rational, but are fascinated with the pseudo-science.
:)
Define fascinated... I mean, heck, I watch those shows too. I get angry at the more obvious absurdities and proceed to throw popcorn at the screen and yell loudly about how stupid these people are being. Now that's entertainment.
It works well if you are watching with friends around who have tendancies to believe in this sort of thing. After a while, they smarten up and start noticing the problems for themselves.
Next time, tell him you read his nonsense evidence and figured out that it was a bunch of shit that only idiots would fall for. Then proceed to show him why it's a bunch of crap. Go point by point if needed.
:)
It's one thing to claim that you've seen another site with a bunch of debunking of the psuedo-evidence, but it's another to claim that hey, any idiot can see that this so called "evidence" is stupid. If your friend doesn't want to appear to be an idiot, then he'll go "oohh, of course" at this point.
He might still believe in the junk science after that, but at least he won't bug you about it anymore.
Your 1600 minutes a month is serious phone usage - way over what I'd consider the norm.
I read a study on this. I believe it said that the average usage among cell phone users in the US was something like 400+ minutes per month. However, it made a distinction between people who carry a phone for work and carry their own phone for all the time usage, and the work phones were significantly lower use than home use phones, thus dropping the average.
I use a cell phone exclusively and dropped my land line entirely. Well, after my last move, I never purchased a new land line connection, in fact. Don't need one. This is rapidly becoming the norm among 20-30 year olds in the US, actually, and starting to spread into other age groups as well. A land line is essentially a waste of money if you have a cell phone and broadband internet. This market, growing fast, is what shoots the average up there. Think of all the phone time you spend during a month. Now make it all into cell phone usage.
Mind you, if you really are from the US as other have guessed, I think I know one reason why it hasn't taken off in the same way as over here - y'all don't have a single standard to which all the providers adhere... as well we beeing screwed over by having to pay for incomming calls and messages (yes, I know this isn't true for all providers any more, but it's true for quite a lot of them). Complain all you want about GSM beeing 'french' (it ain't) or that it ain't 'free competition' between european telcos (it's as free or freeer as in the US btw - we simply have a level playing field)... and using an open, non-proprietary standard to cap it off.
Yes and no. Until about 2 years ago, you were correct. SMS messaging didn't really cross systems. Now, however, that's no longer the case. GSM is pretty danged widespread in the US now, although it still gets badmouthed. I've used GSM off and on for a long time, and while it still doesn't have total marketshare, it has almost total coverage of the country.
But mainly, a lot of providers have put relays and compatible systems and such in place, with the upshot being that text messages now nearly always get through, regardless of the system. There's still a few problems with it in a few cases, but it's universal enough that you're 99% sure the message will get to its destination.
Doesn't help, really, it's a different mindset thing. Yes, text is bigger than it was 2 years ago, but it will never be as big a deal as it is in Europe. Oh, they keep trying to push it, but the public on this side of the pond just ain't buying it. Some of the more notable attempts to push text messaging include text message only communications devices, with little flip screens and keypads in cool colors. Mainly aimed at young women, judging by the designs. This makes it be seen as a fad, and few use texting on a regular basis. Except to have the sports scores or other similar information sent to them automatically, which is about 80-85% of the text use in the US.
People in the US love to talk, and they mainly use the phone for that purpose. WAP isn't taking off too well here either, but it's relatively new to the market around here, really. It's just easier to obtain information on the go via other channels than it is to fire up a WAP browser on your phone and get it.
Cell phones are *huge* over here, but for talking, not for anything else. Believe me, if you hit any mall in the states, you'd see what I mean instantly. Every girl under 16 has a phone and a pricing plan designed for power chatting. Scary, really.
All I can think of is that you must be in the US. In Europe, I would go so far as to say that the primary use of many mobiles sold is for text messaging. I know I send far more texts than I make voice calls.
I can't speak for Japan, but I believe there's a similar situation there. I thought that the US was going the same way, but I'm prepared to be corrected on that.
Consider yourself corrected. US users just don't text message nearly as much as EU or Japanese users.
For one thing, most people don't have the patience for it over here. Either you have to use a keypad and annoying hit keys multiple times, or you have to learn to use predictive text (which is beyond most people.. I swear, I know so many people who have disabled predictive text because they couldn't figure it out...), or they don't like reading on the little tiny screen, etc, etc.
There's a whole host of reasons, but the main one is the lack of instant gratification. You send a text, you don't usually get an immediate response. But you call someone up, and it's two way. Instant gratification.
This is not to say text messages don't get used. On the contrary, they get used a heck of a lot. It's picked up about threefold since, say, 2 years ago. But the percentage is *way* below what you'd see overseas. Over there, people make more texts than they do actual calls. The percentages here in the US are about 3-4 times as many calls as texts.
The overwhelming majority of text messaging in the US is for people getting the game scores sent to their phone by some internet site, in fact.
Meanwhile, RFID tags will talk to anybody in range with a tiny piece of hardware to read the tags.
The range is about 1 inch. The tiny piece of portable hardware to read it is at least the size of a car battery. Sorry, but this doesn't fly.
actually, RFID can be activated without the person carring them knowing. granted, you need to be clode to the reader, but that are plenty of places to hide a reader.
Okay...
a) I find it highly unlikely someone will get a reader within the 1 inch range of the RFID transmission without you actually noticing
b) So what if they did? What have they suddenly gained? My RFID access card for work has a picture of me and my name on the thing in big letters. All scanning my card does is to give you a number that's associated with my name. Or you could just *read* the damned card. I don't care if people know who I am. Really. Honestly. Why would I? I'd rather they did know who I am, in fact.
If I want to be anonymous, I can take it off. But it's *really* unlikely that I'd want to be anonymous at my workplace. I can't think of any reason for that, in fact.
Seriously, would RMS be bitching so much if, instead of RFID cards they use magstripe readers instead?
I'm sure if you asked him, he'd say they're no different, but let's be honest here. RFID is the current hot topic to bitch and complain about.
Fact: There are legitimate reasons for tracking who goes in and out of a building with a hell of a lot of expensive equipment in it.
Fact: How they track this information is largely immaterial, it's a "privacy invasion" just as much with a magstripe card as it is with a RFID card as it is with a hidden camera recording everybody going in the damn door.
Fact: I don't hear anybody bitching about magstripe card entry systems, and they've been around for 50+ years, no?
As you've noticed, writing See ID isn't all that effective. But it can prove to be pretty funny:
http://www.zug.com/pranks/credit/
That is pretty funny, but there's one problem with that site. You see, legally, your name is whatever the hell you say it is. So it doesn't really matter what you sign your name as, it's the act of you doing the signing that makes it legally binding.
Of course, reality is different, and you could probably argue your way out of paying for something successfully that way, but that'd be pretty low.
Realistically, they don't need your signature. It's been charged to your card before you ever get the slip of paper to sign. It's not like they have to go back and put anything in the system for you to get charged for it. That slip of paper you sign goes in a box somewhere just in case you ever contest the charge. Then they can pull it out and say "then why did you sign for it, jerk off?" I've walked out of places with that signature slip before, by accident, and the charge is on my bill just the same. It's wholly unnecessary to the process of you getting charged for something, it's there in case you ever decide to fight the charge on something.
Slips get lost though, which is why most retailers have those electronic signature pads nowadays. Work is likely progressing on automatic signature discrimination, so if you've bought from that retailer before, your signature can be compared automatically and warning bells go off if they are too different.
But I've noticed that all the shady cable modem stuff I've seen has been through ComCast. I recently signed up with RoadRunner and haven't have any problems other than them forcing me to use their Cable Modem instead of my own. But they don't charge extra or give a discount for customer owned modem like my old company did, so I'm not upset too much.
Around here, they offer a "hook up your whole LAN and get a firewall too!" deal for an extra $5-10 a month, where they simply rent you a Linksys Cable/DSL Router box. I hooked up my own box instead. Still, they don't seem to mind multiple hookups using a router, is what I'm saying. They might mind me not paying them for a device which I already have, but hey, they sell the things in stores, you know?
People have some really bizarre reactions to certain numbers. There's the whole "just add the dollars" thing like you mention, which I think is just plain weird.
.95 or .99 on there, and people won't argue with it even more. It's weird, man.
You think it's weird? What's weird is doing the same thing and having them correct you, wrongly. Like I added $1.49 and $1.49 and got "3 bucks" and someone next to me said, "you mean 2 bucks". Whereupon I have to give a "WTF is wrong with you" look at them, before they notice how dumb they are and correct themselves. These are reasonably smart college graduates too. It's not an inability to do simple mathematics, it's just a weird process of rounding cash that I can't understand.
Another one I've noticed in a similar vein is the "single big bill" thing.
Yeah, I've seen the same one. If you really want to reduce complaints, switch to "$73.99" or some other really odd number. Leave the
Like many other's posting today, you're stuck in the paradigm that microbroadcasters are going to intentionally broadcast "on top" of some already in-use band... and that if it weren't for the FCC's enforcement of the licensed allocation the FM and AM bands would be utter chaos. I've got some news for you...
I've got some news for you too. Transmitters "leak". A homemade transmitter tends to leak a lot. They don't stay confined to one and only one section, they spread across a chunk of spectrum. They have to, in fact, because that's how frequency modulation works. But when it goes a lot further than it's supposed to, it causes interference on neighboring channels.
Few here are concerns about jackasses who try to steal bandspace from some other station. That's a self solving problem. But poorly made transmitters that knock out a whole MHz of the spectrum at a time is not unheard of, or indeed, uncommon in pirate radio.
But I don't see why this means we need to have 50 clearchannel stations and none or very few from average Joe's.
The most stations I'm aware of, in one location, that ClearChannel owns is 12. That one I've seen personally, as they simply bought all the radio stations in the area and moved them all into the same broadcast building. The content of them all didn't really change, just the advertising schemes.
But I doubt anywhere at all has "50" channels owned by the same people (be it ClearChannel or anybody else), as there's only 100 tunable FM channels on your radio. Count 'em up.
As for Low Power licensing, I'm all for it. But I agree with the original AC poster who said that these guys are idiots, as simply having thousands of unlicensed ppl broadcasting simply won't work. If you want to get the FCC to offer cheap, low-power, licenses and regulate the max power and locations and such, then more power to you. But simply training people on how to build their own broadcasting devices and antennas and then turning them loose without instilling any kind of "good neighbor" attitude towards the airwaves is just a receipe for disaster.
It's everybody's sandbox, and everybody has to play nice in it, or it becomes a big giant mudhole.
This is Marketing 101. Low number sell better that round ones. The problem with nice, even round numbers is that they're too easy to manipulate mathematically. Two songs at $1.50 is $3.00 and everyone knows it. Two songs at $1.29 is less than that-- only $2.58-- but most people will mentally round the number to "two dollars and something". The idea is to play on people's difficulty in dealing with math and make it HARDER to figure out how much they're really spending.
Wow. I've always wondered why they do that, and that's the first explanation I've heard that actually makes sense. I have always rounded up, myself, so numbers like 1.89 would go up to 2.00, or 1.29 would go up to 1.50 or whatever. That makes the math easy, and I'm always paying less than I thought that way.
But recently, in going out with friends and such, I have personally seen people do mental math on, say, $1.79 and $1.89 and come up with "about 2 bucks". I've always had to point out that it's closer to 4 bucks than any other even number of "bucks". They were just adding the dollar amount and essentially ignoring the cents entirely. And not just one person either, but I've seen many people do this at various times, and it's always stood out in my mind as "how could this person possibly come up with that number?!?"
This explains it. Thank you.
Arguing that people that build something like this are "stupid" because "anyone could come kick it over, here, I'll show you..." is not convincing.
No, but there do exist jerk offs in the world who will kick over your sandcastle, and complaining that these sorts of people do, in fact, exist is not very convincing either. Either you take measures to protect what you create, or stop whining so much when people kick over your sandcastle.
Since they have tools to easily undo changes, they have considered the fact of vandalism and think that's good enough for them. Well then, stop griping about it.
Making content such that anybody can change it and then complaining when somebody changes it in a way you're not happy with strikes me as pretty dang stupid, that's all. If you want to have approval of changes, then rework your system. If not, then don't. But don't expect people to conform to your standards unless you enforce them in some manner. Some people are bullies who will kick over your sandcastles. Deal with it.