A friend just showed me their new cable feature, I think it's called On-Demand Viewing. The cable company puts a bunch of shows into their "on-demand" section, and allows you to watch them whenever you want. They have commercials, but it's just a single commercial at a time, and it's not for a product -- it's for another show on the same network (I watched a couple episodes of Strangers With Candy the other day). The FF/REW features aren't as "fine-grained" as ReplayTV/Tivo, since the signal has to travel back to home base and then back to your box, so there's a 2-3 second delay when you press the button and when it reacts, but I suppose you'd get used to it.
The only problem is that they don't have everything available that way yet. I'd imagine it's only a matter of time, though...
Myself, I have a ReplayTV, which has worked great for years now.
I'm beginning to think that Fight Club had it right.
Topple the credit companies, and society must start anew.
I got a call from a salesman trying to tell me that you can "eliminate your debt" through an interpretation of the laws. Apparently, banks are violating the law when they create your credit card account. By simply sending them a few letters, they will eliminate your account and not report you to the credit bureaus, because if they fought you then they'd be admitting to breaking the law and would have a class action suit against them.
I'm seriously considering this, but it's very expensive ($3,000 for the first $40k of debt and $1,000 for each additional $30k of debt).
It's interesting that lately I've seen a lot of references to Fight Club (both the movie and the book). Does anyone know if this "debt elimination" has any merit to it? My attorney and accountant don't think so but the salesman asked me to have them call him and he'd explain it. If he can convince them, then he's convinced me -- but I doubt they'll be convinced. Something like this, if true, should have hit the headlines.
I tried asking this question to Ask Slashdot (I'm sure many of us are ex-dot-commers who have a ton of debt they'd love to eliminate), but it got rejected. No hard feelings, but it's too bad readers can't mod the queue...
Sounds similar to what IBM does with the AS/400 - allowing hardware subsystems to run different operating systems.
I actually had this on my original ($5,000!) IBM PC back in high school. We had Apple ][s at school, but my dad wanted an IBM because it was "business-oriented." So we bought the QuadLink from QuadRam (can't find it on google or ebay, so they must have gone out of business and nobody wants them any more).
This card, which was an octopus -- it connected to almost everything in the PC -- could switch to Apple mode with Ctrl+Alt+A, and back to IBM with Ctrl+Alt+I. It could play all the Apple games that we played at school, and I also used it to do my homework.
It didn't run things concurrently, though -- switching modes put the other mode "on hold" until you came back to it.
I have never, ever, heard of a speaker bracelet, and can't imagine why one would search for it. [...] Bracelets have nothing to do with speakers.
True, but necklaces do -- years ago I heard about a product, I believe was called the "Bonefone" (Google doesn't have much to say about it, apparently the product died but there are some references to it), which played music through your collarbones.
I always chuckled when I read about it, because I remember a "Mr. Fonebone" who was always getting in trouble in Mad Magazine, back in my youth...
I own Lexmark printers but will never buy another print cartridge.
For $16, I bought an ink refill kit at Costco which will refill many brands of ink cartridges, Lexmark being one of them. I have refilled the black cartridge once so far, which costs $40-$50 at the store -- so already I'm in the black (pun intended).
To do so required drilling a hole (the kit came with a "hand drill" which did the trick) in the existing vent hole so the needle could be put into it, so I don't advise turning the printer upside down, something you rarely do anyway (but, for example, be more careful when moving).
The kit came with one bottle of each of several colors, and 4 bottles of black. I've used perhaps 10% of the first bottle in the first refill, so (doing the math) the black ink is a $160 value ($40 x 40) for just $16. Plus, I get colors (which I haven't yet had the pleasure of refilling).
I hope the rest of you can find a similar kit. So now you can save money buying the razor (printer) and never need to purchase blades (ink cartridges)! Which makes it doubly worse for Lexmark, because to my knowledge they sell the printer at a loss in order to make money on the refills.
So the "Do Not Call" list is even more insidious: it's a "Please Call Me" list for politicians, charities, surveyors and insurance salesmen to purchase in order to have a huge list (50 million so far) of potential customers!
Very well-written story about a computer which "comes to life" through its ability to manipulate the world, and decides to protect humans such that noone can ever die. So the humans play "suicide games" knowing they'll be brought back at the last moment. Excellent story.
The proof was never in the pudding. That doesn't make sense, if you think about it.
The proper quote is, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."
In other words, the dessert might look good, tasty, and filling, but you won't know for sure until you eat it. So, the proof (of whether the cook did a good job, and incidentally didn't poison you), only comes to you when you actually eat it.
Why do you think that english or philosophy are inherantly easier then OS design or quantum mechanics?
Because the first two are "natural" -- we're constantly communicating, and we're constantly asking "why are we here?"
The latter two are very much not natural -- computers are very recently on the scene (50 years or so), and quantum mechanics makes your brain hurt without good psychedelics.
So quit being such heathens and get with the FACTS as described in the Book of Truth.
Or go to hell! Literally.
Ak: Why are you building chapel?
Homer: Because you're all terrible sinners.
Q'Toktok: Since when?
Homer: Since I got here. Now either grab a stone or go to
Hell. -- "Missionary: Impossible"
For example, in rural area many cell towers have been placed in church steeples because they are high points, and it is less expensive and less ugly than building a tower.
So... Is it the "spirit of God" that you're feeling? Or is it just residual effects from the cell tower?
Neat. So the LHC is also an "extra dimension tester"? That's really cool. I wonder what we can do once we find extra dimensions? Could we somehow pull energy out of them?
The USA also has a good way of claiming innovations as its own, by "Americanising" everything.
This is true in TV as well. I've been seeing ads for this "new" show "Coupling" on NBC, so I decided to set my ReplayTV to record it. (Studios are smart: they put ads for new shows at the end of the commercial break, so when I 30-second skip too far, I end up 7-second instant replaying back a bit too far as well; and if the commercial looks interesting, I'll rewind to the beginning of it.)
Since it was a few weeks before the debut, and the ReplayTV only has a week of schedule, I set it to record any show with "Coupling" in the title, actors, directors, or description.
I was surprised that, less than a week later, I had a new episode to watch! I thought, "But it's not supposed to debut for a few more weeks, and besides this is on the PBS channel, not NBC."
So I watched it, and it was pretty good, and even had some of the same jokes/spots that the commercials were showing.
I saw another episode before the American version debuted, and happened to catch a talk show (flipping channels) where one of the characters talked about it being originally British and being redone (by the same guy) for an American audience, and that he had done that for a couple other countries as well (Australia being one of them).
When I saw the pilot last week, I was amazed -- the pilot was actually the first episode I had seen from PBS! Except with different people, of course, and the jokes were somewhat different with American words instead of lorry, bonnet, and steak-and-kidney pie.
I'll bet that most people who watched the show believe that it was an NBC original.
Well, I believe it still could be considered dumping based on the timing of their press releases.
If they eliminate the variable of "when to sell" (by making them automatic transactions), then the only way to affect the stock price is by making wild announcements day(s) prior to the already-defined sale.
Would this be something the SEC should be concerned about? It's still rigging, but with some sense of plausible deniability...
I remember buying a Suse distribution a few years ago (7.1 IIRC), and marveling that they included not only 7 CDs, but an 8th disc which was a DVD, with the content of the other 7 CDs on it. It was great installing EVERYTHING without having to flip CDs.
2. Perhaps it won't be full of soda. The GPS device doesn't have to fit in the aluminum skin of a normal can - it could have a false bottom or something. Enough liquid in the can to splash around, and it would weigh the same as a regular can.
I wonder if someone will then decide to sue: "I paid for 12 ounces of Coke and was ripped off!"
It would get expensive, but perhaps they could put "repeaters" in the non-winning cans of Coke.
Then all the Coke cans in the USA, including the ones in landfills, slowly start to form an alternative network... the Cokenet.
They'd be able to bounce signals from can to can, in order to locate the "winner."
The only problem is powering it, especially if we're going to use it for Internet-type activity (i.e., file sharing;-), which is bandwidth-intensive. But it sounds like a neat idea to rapidly move new, low-cost tech into the countryside.
Not really... It's best to use multiple modifier keys and a single functional key. Or perhaps even all modifiers? Such as Shift+Left-Ctrl+Right-Ctrl, etc.
VMware uses all modifiers to break out of the VM: by default it's Ctrl+Alt, but it's configurable to a degree.
I suppose they could have used Shift+Esc+Break but then they'd have to have special code to handle the case where a user hit Shift+Esc -- it would then have to wait and see if they hit Break, or if they lifted their fingers then it would send the Shift+Esc to the application... A bit more work.
Slashdot Mirror
The only problem is that they don't have everything available that way yet. I'd imagine it's only a matter of time, though...
Myself, I have a ReplayTV, which has worked great for years now.
My thoughts exactly. Which is why I'm asking questions rather than wasting the money immediately. "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."
I got a call from a salesman trying to tell me that you can "eliminate your debt" through an interpretation of the laws. Apparently, banks are violating the law when they create your credit card account. By simply sending them a few letters, they will eliminate your account and not report you to the credit bureaus, because if they fought you then they'd be admitting to breaking the law and would have a class action suit against them.
I'm seriously considering this, but it's very expensive ($3,000 for the first $40k of debt and $1,000 for each additional $30k of debt).
It's interesting that lately I've seen a lot of references to Fight Club (both the movie and the book). Does anyone know if this "debt elimination" has any merit to it? My attorney and accountant don't think so but the salesman asked me to have them call him and he'd explain it. If he can convince them, then he's convinced me -- but I doubt they'll be convinced. Something like this, if true, should have hit the headlines.
I tried asking this question to Ask Slashdot (I'm sure many of us are ex-dot-commers who have a ton of debt they'd love to eliminate), but it got rejected. No hard feelings, but it's too bad readers can't mod the queue...
I actually had this on my original ($5,000!) IBM PC back in high school. We had Apple ][s at school, but my dad wanted an IBM because it was "business-oriented." So we bought the QuadLink from QuadRam (can't find it on google or ebay, so they must have gone out of business and nobody wants them any more).
This card, which was an octopus -- it connected to almost everything in the PC -- could switch to Apple mode with Ctrl+Alt+A, and back to IBM with Ctrl+Alt+I. It could play all the Apple games that we played at school, and I also used it to do my homework.
It didn't run things concurrently, though -- switching modes put the other mode "on hold" until you came back to it.
Ah, memories...
True, but necklaces do -- years ago I heard about a product, I believe was called the "Bonefone" (Google doesn't have much to say about it, apparently the product died but there are some references to it), which played music through your collarbones.
I always chuckled when I read about it, because I remember a "Mr. Fonebone" who was always getting in trouble in Mad Magazine, back in my youth...
Under IE, I got the same results the other responder did as well (most likely you need an upgraded license key?).
Neat sounding site, though!
For $16, I bought an ink refill kit at Costco which will refill many brands of ink cartridges, Lexmark being one of them. I have refilled the black cartridge once so far, which costs $40-$50 at the store -- so already I'm in the black (pun intended).
To do so required drilling a hole (the kit came with a "hand drill" which did the trick) in the existing vent hole so the needle could be put into it, so I don't advise turning the printer upside down, something you rarely do anyway (but, for example, be more careful when moving).
The kit came with one bottle of each of several colors, and 4 bottles of black. I've used perhaps 10% of the first bottle in the first refill, so (doing the math) the black ink is a $160 value ($40 x 40) for just $16. Plus, I get colors (which I haven't yet had the pleasure of refilling).
I hope the rest of you can find a similar kit. So now you can save money buying the razor (printer) and never need to purchase blades (ink cartridges)! Which makes it doubly worse for Lexmark, because to my knowledge they sell the printer at a loss in order to make money on the refills.
So the "Do Not Call" list is even more insidious: it's a "Please Call Me" list for politicians, charities, surveyors and insurance salesmen to purchase in order to have a huge list (50 million so far) of potential customers!
And if I get to watch a movie afterward, so much the better.
Very well-written story about a computer which "comes to life" through its ability to manipulate the world, and decides to protect humans such that noone can ever die. So the humans play "suicide games" knowing they'll be brought back at the last moment. Excellent story.
The proof was never in the pudding. That doesn't make sense, if you think about it.
The proper quote is, "The proof of the pudding is in the eating."
In other words, the dessert might look good, tasty, and filling, but you won't know for sure until you eat it. So, the proof (of whether the cook did a good job, and incidentally didn't poison you), only comes to you when you actually eat it.
</pedantic>
Ralph Wiggum: (to Lisa, who fell asleep in class on top of her project) "You look like my mom after she's had her box of wine."
Couldn't find the episode in snpp.com, but found a reference to it here.
Under? Hell, you gave me a great idea.... I'm claiming a patent on the sun!
Because the first two are "natural" -- we're constantly communicating, and we're constantly asking "why are we here?"
The latter two are very much not natural -- computers are very recently on the scene (50 years or so), and quantum mechanics makes your brain hurt without good psychedelics.
Ak: Why are you building chapel?
Homer: Because you're all terrible sinners.
Q'Toktok: Since when?
Homer: Since I got here. Now either grab a stone or go to Hell.
-- "Missionary: Impossible"
So... Is it the "spirit of God" that you're feeling? Or is it just residual effects from the cell tower?
Neat. So the LHC is also an "extra dimension tester"? That's really cool. I wonder what we can do once we find extra dimensions? Could we somehow pull energy out of them?
This is true in TV as well. I've been seeing ads for this "new" show "Coupling" on NBC, so I decided to set my ReplayTV to record it. (Studios are smart: they put ads for new shows at the end of the commercial break, so when I 30-second skip too far, I end up 7-second instant replaying back a bit too far as well; and if the commercial looks interesting, I'll rewind to the beginning of it.)
Since it was a few weeks before the debut, and the ReplayTV only has a week of schedule, I set it to record any show with "Coupling" in the title, actors, directors, or description.
I was surprised that, less than a week later, I had a new episode to watch! I thought, "But it's not supposed to debut for a few more weeks, and besides this is on the PBS channel, not NBC."
So I watched it, and it was pretty good, and even had some of the same jokes/spots that the commercials were showing.
I saw another episode before the American version debuted, and happened to catch a talk show (flipping channels) where one of the characters talked about it being originally British and being redone (by the same guy) for an American audience, and that he had done that for a couple other countries as well (Australia being one of them).
When I saw the pilot last week, I was amazed -- the pilot was actually the first episode I had seen from PBS! Except with different people, of course, and the jokes were somewhat different with American words instead of lorry, bonnet, and steak-and-kidney pie.
I'll bet that most people who watched the show believe that it was an NBC original.
If they eliminate the variable of "when to sell" (by making them automatic transactions), then the only way to affect the stock price is by making wild announcements day(s) prior to the already-defined sale.
Would this be something the SEC should be concerned about? It's still rigging, but with some sense of plausible deniability...
I remember buying a Suse distribution a few years ago (7.1 IIRC), and marveling that they included not only 7 CDs, but an 8th disc which was a DVD, with the content of the other 7 CDs on it. It was great installing EVERYTHING without having to flip CDs.
I wonder if someone will then decide to sue: "I paid for 12 ounces of Coke and was ripped off!"
Did anyone else misread the "i" as an "l"? The Chinese are about to be launched onto Oprah!
Then all the Coke cans in the USA, including the ones in landfills, slowly start to form an alternative network... the Cokenet.
They'd be able to bounce signals from can to can, in order to locate the "winner."
The only problem is powering it, especially if we're going to use it for Internet-type activity (i.e., file sharing ;-), which is bandwidth-intensive. But it sounds like a neat idea to rapidly move new, low-cost tech into the countryside.
Not really... It's best to use multiple modifier keys and a single functional key. Or perhaps even all modifiers? Such as Shift+Left-Ctrl+Right-Ctrl, etc.
VMware uses all modifiers to break out of the VM: by default it's Ctrl+Alt, but it's configurable to a degree.
I suppose they could have used Shift+Esc+Break but then they'd have to have special code to handle the case where a user hit Shift+Esc -- it would then have to wait and see if they hit Break, or if they lifted their fingers then it would send the Shift+Esc to the application... A bit more work.
Sounds like yoghurt. Or Q*bert. A trash-talking culture?