...is what this is called. You see, everyone (and I use that in the generic, rather than literal sense) uses MS Office is their standard. Is it worth an hour of time per month per admin employee - 15 minutes or less for professionals - to have a seamless transition and not have to make any legacy document changes?
From a personal standpoint, it doesn't make sense. Who cares if you have to spend a couple extra hours a month to save a couple of bucks? From business standpoint, it's all about the bottom line. If I can sell you a product that will mean your widget costs $500 to produce instead of $550 to produce, that makes good business sense. If I happen to be making $100 on each widget you sell with my technology, does it really matter, as long as the savings are transparent? The individual cries foul, but the businessman counts his stock option bonuses and orders another beer.
Exactly my point. But having the archive wasn't quite worth having to create a folder and manually move each email to that separate folder. Perhaps if I had less email (I produce about 200 different projects per year) it wouldn't be as much of a burden, but there's a lot of email out there. Luckily, the other posters suggestion of GmailUI seems to work well, and now I can have a quick interface and archive as well. Now if I could just figure out how to strip the attachments out of the folders so I could save the text but not take up all the room in the mailbox files. Guess I'll have to wait 'til I get a quick post on the next email-related thread. (BTW, asking a question on/., as long as it's tangentially related to the topic, can really get hard-to-search-for questions answered - it's amazing how much casual knowledge there is out there)
I really wanted to mod this, but I feel obliged to respond. Green is that last possible thing you should every try to outsource. It defeats the whole purpose of green. Being green is about taking personal responsibility to reduce the total load of industry on the environment. Paying someone else to do it for you effectively allows you to ignore the core concept for which you are striving. You're essentially saying that it's too much bother for you to do it, so you're going to pay someone else. I think of it as trying to reduce the instance of obesity and smoking by paying two other fit and smoke free folks workout every day for 30 minutes and not to smoke. You're still fat and have emphysema, and there are no additional fit, non-smokers in the population.
This is not to say that you shouldn't buy alternative energy, just that you should do what you can in your own backyard first. Put a green roof on your building, plant more trees, have a permeable parking lot, reduce the energy used (turn the lights off when you leave), and all the other varied suggestions here.
Is is insightful, if in a bit of a twisted way. It does point out that much of the bandwidth is "wasted" by spam, which is insightful, though redundant here on/. It also shows, via the mods themselves, that spammers are viewed as inherently evil. So much so that otherwise resonable people would be moved to homocide over their actions.
And it doesn't really need to be vigilante death squads. I'm happy seeing them die in a regulated environment by state approved means. Okay, I'm kidding - I want them tortured extensively and then mutilated and their lifeless, eviscerated bodies placed on show in the capitals of the world.
That's an interesting suggestion. It would work better if I didn't use the inbox as a to-do folder, though. Cool idea for separating the wheat from the chaff semi-automagically.
My email looks like that when I'm really busy - my inbox tends to be a "to do" list of sorts - once I've addressed the issue, the files get moved. I do have several rules and folders for various things, but I work on about 200 projects a year and making a folder for each one would be cumbersome at best - especially when it's almost as useful to just have everything in a bin and use the search. I also tend to get ads and seminar/training info from various places, and most of them I want...at least temporarily, but I'd rather not have them clogging up the "archive".
The junk mail filter on my tbird must have been untrained quite well. I've got spamassassin on my server, but tbird still lets a lot of the new span through (maybe 10-15%). Admittedly, it's my fault - I need to abandon my separate-email-per-vendor old school tracking so I can just blackhole the catchall instead of reading it. Another item for my "when I'm not busy" list.
for transferring mail to an archive folder that can be mapped to a keystroke?
Right now I have a trash box that is a zillion emails long - I use it as an archive and a trashcan at the same time. What I really want is an archive box that I can hit a key (hey, how 'bout that scroll lock key?) to send my "real" archive emails to, and use the delete key for the actual trash? I suspect it's out there, but sifting through the extensions on the mozilla page is almost as much fun as chewing sand.
Actually, it's also because the maximum number of clueless users on Windows far outstrips all other OSes combined, likely by a couple orders of magnitude. I would also venture that windows users are more likely to look for that "free ride" download instead of purchasing software. Linux also has its freeware crowd, but it's a totally different environment.
Unfortunately, the old MS model - mostly pre-internet - ignored permissions, or implemented them poorly such that even trivial software is written expecting admin privledges. MS just doesn't have the balls to go break all of that software. Shame, too, as they could have actually fixed the system had they done that.
Maybe it's not the MS is incompetent, but merely spineless?
You must be one of those people who doesn't mind paging, or are thinking of your grandmother's or secretary's computer. Now, I'm as patient as the rest most of the time, but I got 2GB for my XP so that I could turn off my paging file. Maybe I'm just old school - you know, back in the late 80s and 90s when we didn't have to worry about performance destroying paging. Sure, Macs had it, and it sucked mightily (but you got double the ram for the price of a software package!). You're about right, in that it take 443MB to load my basic office apps and background processes/drivers, but with a gig, that doesn't leave much if you're doing anything intensive - CAD, video editing/converting, photo editing, etc.
Interesting. I have a large (44W) CFL in my garage and it's done quite well the past two winters at temps down to -15C. It takes a bit to come on, but lights fine and has lasted longer than the past two 200W incandescents (it burns base up).
I guess my point is that a low wattage lamp on nearly-continuously at above-freezing temps should last quite a long time - just set the thermostat to cycle over a wider range, and use a lower wattage lamp to increase the duty cycle.
Oh, and just for the record, I generally hate CFLs. Nasty color rendition for the most part, and the color temps vary from brand to brand and (at the infrequent rate I buy them) from batch to batch. That means that if you have one go bad, you end up replacing all of the ones in the room or suffer a 1970s flashback.
I was just playing devil's advocate - I generally hate CFLs.
I'll tell you what - I'll back a no-incadenscent proposal when the following three conditions are added:
1. All fluorescent lamps must have a CRI of 97 or higher 2. All fluorescent lamps for sale shall either
(a) match the color temperature of the equivalent incandescent wattage replaced
(b) produce a 5000K+/-200K color temperature and be labeled as such 3. All fluorescent lamps shall be dimmable using all dimmer technologies which currently work with incandescents
(a) color temperature shall not vary by more than 10% under the dimmed condition
Now, if I wanted to be a pain, I would have changed 3(a) to read that the color temperature shall scale with the dimmed setting, but that's really asking too much.
So what you're really saying is that perhaps Australia should consider dropping this ban and take a harder look at the generation side of the equation.
It's a shame that we can't figure out a way to generate energy using the power expended by having people throw insane amounts of money at real estate - California could become self sufficient overnight.
Thank god there's no way to shop, say, over some communication medium at a non-local store and have it delivered via post. If there were an easy way to place an order in another country and have it delivered, that would really cause problems for this law. You know, somebody should invent something like that - they'd probably make a fortune.
You do know that that is true of incandescent lamps as well, right? There is a dip in the light output at the main frequency, it's just not as significant. It's worth mentioning that CFLs (actually, most modern flourescents) are not on/off stobe lamps, but use longer persistance phosphors to overcome the effect.
This used to be noticable on HP calculators which had display refreshes that produced a beat frequency that was very visible under 60 hz lighting. FWIW, I've used fluoresents in my shop most of my life, and I still have ten fingers. Of course, it might have been that I can hear my tools when they're running, too. *shrug*
Early in the 20th century, two shoe company executives travelled to sub-Saharan Africa to determine the viability of the African market for their wares. Upon returning, one fo the men reported to the board of directors that there was no market for their product, as nobody wore shoes. The second went to his board of directors and excitiedly pronouced that they were going to make a fortune, as the market was ripe for the picking.
Arguments for DRM encumbered media are predicated on one idea - that you should be paying for each individual copy of a work you consume. One CD for the car, one for the portable, one for the kids room, one for the stereo, one for the player at work, and one for each of your friends who wants to borrow it. Now, for a $15 CD, that could easily add up to over $100. Without DRM, you would have to pay $100 for a single disc to cover the "opportunity loss" for the labels. With DRM, you would only need to pay $15 if you only wanted the music for your portable player. Conversely one might expect that the $15 CD you buy today might be replaced with a DRM'd set of options which only cost $0.80 to $2.00, but unfortunately, disribition costs are so high that this model is essentially infeasable, even if you could conviced the contect provider s to buy into this scenereo. It violates the first law of IP: The total dollars flowing to the content owners' accounts shall never decrease.
It reminds me of my other favorite fallacy: that the actual equivalent salary of a typical housewife (or housespouse), is about $135k (http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/03/pf/mothers_work/? cnn=yes). That may be true if you had to go out and buy each service from an independant contractor provider, but I would put the value closer to $14,000-$18,000. It's a matter of buying at cost - $5-$7/hr with full benefits, room and board, company car, and full pension (old-style, no 401k here) is not an uncommon price for an untrained (or trained-on-the-job) worker with no educational requirements. Oh, sure it's a little higher in the cities, but what do you think nannies get paid?
You see, Macrovision sees the content word from the $135,000/year homemaker perspective - anything less would be a bargain. The rest of us know that, while we certainly give up some income to have a stay at home spouse, the actual cost is far, far lower. Which is why their arguments rings quite hollow.
I hate to say it but, um, you know who sets those things, right? People. It's not some basic cosmic constant that Elementary school must start at 8:42am.
By the way, I just found out today that, thanks to congress, I got to waste 20 minutes of my day figuring out how to fix a bug in Outlook that makes all the appointments in the last 3 weeks of March off by an hour. Oh, sure, there's a patch for that, but hey - it doesn't work unless Outlook is the default mail client (I use Tbird). So I guess if you just need to sync calendars with most of the corporate world you're effectively fucked for most of March. Not that I'm bitter that I'm going to have to waste $200 of billiable time (just my estimate of how long it will take to track down and fix this) to save almost exactly zero dollars a year by shifting my clock at a different time.
Statistically it's most likly to hit there because it's the largest named area? I don't know, I agree it sounds a bit fishy (npi) - maybe they figure if Google and MS are in the way of a potential tsunami, one or the other will figure out a solution. *shrug*
Wow, that just made my brain hurt. You are somewhat correct that we are getting closer to just setting our clocks ahead one hour permanenty.
Which begs the question: Why bother? Nobody actually runs 9 to 5 as standard business hours anyway. Why not just let the hours remain and forget it all - those who don't want to get up before the sun can change (make the change if you're the boss, find another job if you're not). Is it really so hard for humans to understand that the sun can rise and set at different times during the year, or are we really that stupid? No, I take that back. I don't want anyone to answer that question.
Yeah, but which finger? Best to take them all - you wouldn't want to get stuck with a phone and the wrong finger. Though, I suppose you could always make a cup of chili with it, so it wouldn't be a total loss.
Yup - 500 feet of Canare shielded cable with true-75 ohm Canare 3 part plugs. 3 for component, 5 for VGA (BNC bulkhead at the head end), 2 for S-Vid, 1 for composite, one extra I used for the screen trigger (hey, it was there). Like black spaghetti. Not sure it really made all that much difference over cable half the cost.
The problem with long runs in digital is that they use lots of tricks to get the high frequency to travel that far, in close proximity to the other HF runs. Impedance plays a huge role and, iirc, the signal can actually be below the noise threshhold and still be extracted at the other end. Its been two decades since I had any EE coursework as an undergrad, so most of this is from what I've read various places backed up with only the most tenuous academic basis. As you extend the length of the cable, I believe timing can also be a problem, though it may just be crosstalk-induced signal degradation. I think to go further than 50-75' requires some active (though possibly passive) balancing of the signal, or an amplifier of some type.
I'm running 50' to my RPTV right now with one of the first cables Monoprice imported (seriously, Shawn had mine sent by air direct) about a year ago and it works great. (I sold the dream house to move into town for the school system...my cables are all currently hidden behind some crown molding in the basement where the hot water heat return used to be!)
Some of the largest carriers in the US still use CDMA phones, which are tied to service by their IMEI number. They come preloaded with the carrier's software and they buy enough phones to get custom versions with many features restricted. Verizon is the 800lb gorilla in this arena, but I currently have US Cellular which is the same way (not for much longer, though). They routinely prevent all multimedia transfers though the usb interface, instead requiring that all such transfers occur over "the network", thus generating an additional revenue stream. Take a picture? $0.25 to transfer it. Want a ringtone? Buy from the company store or pay for the data transfer - just $9.99/mo plus per-kb pricing. In return, their customers get a "free" phone along with a 24 month commitment to a service plan that will likley run no less than $40. Bargain, huh?
Other players in the US market use gsm, and you can buy your phone and service separately. Here's the rub: you can go pay full price for your phone on the open market and buy just a sim, but you'll pay the same monthly (phone subsidy) fee that the guy next to is paying, and he got a $450 equipment discount in return for the next 24 months of his business. Most gsm providers don't lock their house-branded phones too much. BTW - that $450 is a max benefit - a $200 phone would just be "free" or you might get $25-$50 back as a rebate. The retail stores will only spot you about $175-$200, but the serious online merchants will also give you the $200-$250 contract kickback they get after you stay for 6 months. These phones are, however, "locked" to the carrier, though there seems to be many outlets for unlocking service. Also, it is legal for a phone owner (under contract or not) to unlock their own handset, but the law doesn't require the carrier to actually help in the unlocking process (i.e. they can't be compelled to unlock your phone, even if you request it).
Aside from the locking thing, there's really very little to complain about if you want a new phone. The discount is about $175, and if you want to break the contract (cancel before 2 years is up), you owe them $175 cancellation fee. This seems wrong if you're in, say, month 20, as you've already paid most of the money back through the monthly fees. Except that there is no drop in rate after 24 months, nor is there any lower rates if you bring your own phone. You may as well just get a new phone every two years. Brought to you by the country who views the whole world as disposable.
Slashdot Mirror
...is what this is called. You see, everyone (and I use that in the generic, rather than literal sense) uses MS Office is their standard. Is it worth an hour of time per month per admin employee - 15 minutes or less for professionals - to have a seamless transition and not have to make any legacy document changes?
From a personal standpoint, it doesn't make sense. Who cares if you have to spend a couple extra hours a month to save a couple of bucks? From business standpoint, it's all about the bottom line. If I can sell you a product that will mean your widget costs $500 to produce instead of $550 to produce, that makes good business sense. If I happen to be making $100 on each widget you sell with my technology, does it really matter, as long as the savings are transparent? The individual cries foul, but the businessman counts his stock option bonuses and orders another beer.
Exactly my point. But having the archive wasn't quite worth having to create a folder and manually move each email to that separate folder. Perhaps if I had less email (I produce about 200 different projects per year) it wouldn't be as much of a burden, but there's a lot of email out there. Luckily, the other posters suggestion of GmailUI seems to work well, and now I can have a quick interface and archive as well. Now if I could just figure out how to strip the attachments out of the folders so I could save the text but not take up all the room in the mailbox files. Guess I'll have to wait 'til I get a quick post on the next email-related thread. (BTW, asking a question on /., as long as it's tangentially related to the topic, can really get hard-to-search-for questions answered - it's amazing how much casual knowledge there is out there)
an old Vladivostok telephone directory?
I really wanted to mod this, but I feel obliged to respond. Green is that last possible thing you should every try to outsource. It defeats the whole purpose of green. Being green is about taking personal responsibility to reduce the total load of industry on the environment. Paying someone else to do it for you effectively allows you to ignore the core concept for which you are striving. You're essentially saying that it's too much bother for you to do it, so you're going to pay someone else. I think of it as trying to reduce the instance of obesity and smoking by paying two other fit and smoke free folks workout every day for 30 minutes and not to smoke. You're still fat and have emphysema, and there are no additional fit, non-smokers in the population.
This is not to say that you shouldn't buy alternative energy, just that you should do what you can in your own backyard first. Put a green roof on your building, plant more trees, have a permeable parking lot, reduce the energy used (turn the lights off when you leave), and all the other varied suggestions here.
Is is insightful, if in a bit of a twisted way. It does point out that much of the bandwidth is "wasted" by spam, which is insightful, though redundant here on /. It also shows, via the mods themselves, that spammers are viewed as inherently evil. So much so that otherwise resonable people would be moved to homocide over their actions.
And it doesn't really need to be vigilante death squads. I'm happy seeing them die in a regulated environment by state approved means. Okay, I'm kidding - I want them tortured extensively and then mutilated and their lifeless, eviscerated bodies placed on show in the capitals of the world.
...they could be talking about putting hydrogen in cars.
oops.
That's an interesting suggestion. It would work better if I didn't use the inbox as a to-do folder, though. Cool idea for separating the wheat from the chaff semi-automagically.
My email looks like that when I'm really busy - my inbox tends to be a "to do" list of sorts - once I've addressed the issue, the files get moved. I do have several rules and folders for various things, but I work on about 200 projects a year and making a folder for each one would be cumbersome at best - especially when it's almost as useful to just have everything in a bin and use the search. I also tend to get ads and seminar/training info from various places, and most of them I want...at least temporarily, but I'd rather not have them clogging up the "archive".
The junk mail filter on my tbird must have been untrained quite well. I've got spamassassin on my server, but tbird still lets a lot of the new span through (maybe 10-15%). Admittedly, it's my fault - I need to abandon my separate-email-per-vendor old school tracking so I can just blackhole the catchall instead of reading it. Another item for my "when I'm not busy" list.
for transferring mail to an archive folder that can be mapped to a keystroke?
Right now I have a trash box that is a zillion emails long - I use it as an archive and a trashcan at the same time. What I really want is an archive box that I can hit a key (hey, how 'bout that scroll lock key?) to send my "real" archive emails to, and use the delete key for the actual trash? I suspect it's out there, but sifting through the extensions on the mozilla page is almost as much fun as chewing sand.
Oh, and please don't suggest gmail.
Actually, it's also because the maximum number of clueless users on Windows far outstrips all other OSes combined, likely by a couple orders of magnitude. I would also venture that windows users are more likely to look for that "free ride" download instead of purchasing software. Linux also has its freeware crowd, but it's a totally different environment.
Unfortunately, the old MS model - mostly pre-internet - ignored permissions, or implemented them poorly such that even trivial software is written expecting admin privledges. MS just doesn't have the balls to go break all of that software. Shame, too, as they could have actually fixed the system had they done that.
Maybe it's not the MS is incompetent, but merely spineless?
You must be one of those people who doesn't mind paging, or are thinking of your grandmother's or secretary's computer. Now, I'm as patient as the rest most of the time, but I got 2GB for my XP so that I could turn off my paging file. Maybe I'm just old school - you know, back in the late 80s and 90s when we didn't have to worry about performance destroying paging. Sure, Macs had it, and it sucked mightily (but you got double the ram for the price of a software package!). You're about right, in that it take 443MB to load my basic office apps and background processes/drivers, but with a gig, that doesn't leave much if you're doing anything intensive - CAD, video editing/converting, photo editing, etc.
Interesting. I have a large (44W) CFL in my garage and it's done quite well the past two winters at temps down to -15C. It takes a bit to come on, but lights fine and has lasted longer than the past two 200W incandescents (it burns base up).
I guess my point is that a low wattage lamp on nearly-continuously at above-freezing temps should last quite a long time - just set the thermostat to cycle over a wider range, and use a lower wattage lamp to increase the duty cycle.
Oh, and just for the record, I generally hate CFLs. Nasty color rendition for the most part, and the color temps vary from brand to brand and (at the infrequent rate I buy them) from batch to batch. That means that if you have one go bad, you end up replacing all of the ones in the room or suffer a 1970s flashback.
I was just playing devil's advocate - I generally hate CFLs.
I'll tell you what - I'll back a no-incadenscent proposal when the following three conditions are added:
1. All fluorescent lamps must have a CRI of 97 or higher
2. All fluorescent lamps for sale shall either
(a) match the color temperature of the equivalent incandescent wattage replaced
(b) produce a 5000K+/-200K color temperature and be labeled as such
3. All fluorescent lamps shall be dimmable using all dimmer technologies which currently work with incandescents
(a) color temperature shall not vary by more than 10% under the dimmed condition
Now, if I wanted to be a pain, I would have changed 3(a) to read that the color temperature shall scale with the dimmed setting, but that's really asking too much.
So what you're really saying is that perhaps Australia should consider dropping this ban and take a harder look at the generation side of the equation.
It's a shame that we can't figure out a way to generate energy using the power expended by having people throw insane amounts of money at real estate - California could become self sufficient overnight.
So, just plug in a 60 watt fluorescent lamp, or a pair of 30s. They'll last longer than the incandescents, too.
The pumphouse is a poor reason. Fucking lousy light quality is a far better reason to no use fluorescents.
Thank god there's no way to shop, say, over some communication medium at a non-local store and have it delivered via post. If there were an easy way to place an order in another country and have it delivered, that would really cause problems for this law. You know, somebody should invent something like that - they'd probably make a fortune.
You do know that that is true of incandescent lamps as well, right? There is a dip in the light output at the main frequency, it's just not as significant. It's worth mentioning that CFLs (actually, most modern flourescents) are not on/off stobe lamps, but use longer persistance phosphors to overcome the effect.
This used to be noticable on HP calculators which had display refreshes that produced a beat frequency that was very visible under 60 hz lighting. FWIW, I've used fluoresents in my shop most of my life, and I still have ten fingers. Of course, it might have been that I can hear my tools when they're running, too. *shrug*
So, maybe he's just stupid, not guilty of misconduct. Not sure, as a scientist, which I'd rather be labeled with.
Early in the 20th century, two shoe company executives travelled to sub-Saharan Africa to determine the viability of the African market for their wares. Upon returning, one fo the men reported to the board of directors that there was no market for their product, as nobody wore shoes. The second went to his board of directors and excitiedly pronouced that they were going to make a fortune, as the market was ripe for the picking.
? cnn=yes). That may be true if you had to go out and buy each service from an independant contractor provider, but I would put the value closer to $14,000-$18,000. It's a matter of buying at cost - $5-$7/hr with full benefits, room and board, company car, and full pension (old-style, no 401k here) is not an uncommon price for an untrained (or trained-on-the-job) worker with no educational requirements. Oh, sure it's a little higher in the cities, but what do you think nannies get paid?
Arguments for DRM encumbered media are predicated on one idea - that you should be paying for each individual copy of a work you consume. One CD for the car, one for the portable, one for the kids room, one for the stereo, one for the player at work, and one for each of your friends who wants to borrow it. Now, for a $15 CD, that could easily add up to over $100. Without DRM, you would have to pay $100 for a single disc to cover the "opportunity loss" for the labels. With DRM, you would only need to pay $15 if you only wanted the music for your portable player. Conversely one might expect that the $15 CD you buy today might be replaced with a DRM'd set of options which only cost $0.80 to $2.00, but unfortunately, disribition costs are so high that this model is essentially infeasable, even if you could conviced the contect provider s to buy into this scenereo. It violates the first law of IP: The total dollars flowing to the content owners' accounts shall never decrease.
It reminds me of my other favorite fallacy: that the actual equivalent salary of a typical housewife (or housespouse), is about $135k (http://money.cnn.com/2006/05/03/pf/mothers_work/
You see, Macrovision sees the content word from the $135,000/year homemaker perspective - anything less would be a bargain. The rest of us know that, while we certainly give up some income to have a stay at home spouse, the actual cost is far, far lower. Which is why their arguments rings quite hollow.
I hate to say it but, um, you know who sets those things, right? People. It's not some basic cosmic constant that Elementary school must start at 8:42am.
By the way, I just found out today that, thanks to congress, I got to waste 20 minutes of my day figuring out how to fix a bug in Outlook that makes all the appointments in the last 3 weeks of March off by an hour. Oh, sure, there's a patch for that, but hey - it doesn't work unless Outlook is the default mail client (I use Tbird). So I guess if you just need to sync calendars with most of the corporate world you're effectively fucked for most of March. Not that I'm bitter that I'm going to have to waste $200 of billiable time (just my estimate of how long it will take to track down and fix this) to save almost exactly zero dollars a year by shifting my clock at a different time.
Statistically it's most likly to hit there because it's the largest named area? I don't know, I agree it sounds a bit fishy (npi) - maybe they figure if Google and MS are in the way of a potential tsunami, one or the other will figure out a solution. *shrug*
Wow, that just made my brain hurt. You are somewhat correct that we are getting closer to just setting our clocks ahead one hour permanenty.
Which begs the question: Why bother? Nobody actually runs 9 to 5 as standard business hours anyway. Why not just let the hours remain and forget it all - those who don't want to get up before the sun can change (make the change if you're the boss, find another job if you're not). Is it really so hard for humans to understand that the sun can rise and set at different times during the year, or are we really that stupid? No, I take that back. I don't want anyone to answer that question.
Yeah, but which finger? Best to take them all - you wouldn't want to get stuck with a phone and the wrong finger. Though, I suppose you could always make a cup of chili with it, so it wouldn't be a total loss.
Yup - 500 feet of Canare shielded cable with true-75 ohm Canare 3 part plugs. 3 for component, 5 for VGA (BNC bulkhead at the head end), 2 for S-Vid, 1 for composite, one extra I used for the screen trigger (hey, it was there). Like black spaghetti. Not sure it really made all that much difference over cable half the cost.
The problem with long runs in digital is that they use lots of tricks to get the high frequency to travel that far, in close proximity to the other HF runs. Impedance plays a huge role and, iirc, the signal can actually be below the noise threshhold and still be extracted at the other end. Its been two decades since I had any EE coursework as an undergrad, so most of this is from what I've read various places backed up with only the most tenuous academic basis. As you extend the length of the cable, I believe timing can also be a problem, though it may just be crosstalk-induced signal degradation. I think to go further than 50-75' requires some active (though possibly passive) balancing of the signal, or an amplifier of some type.
I'm running 50' to my RPTV right now with one of the first cables Monoprice imported (seriously, Shawn had mine sent by air direct) about a year ago and it works great. (I sold the dream house to move into town for the school system...my cables are all currently hidden behind some crown molding in the basement where the hot water heat return used to be!)
Some of the largest carriers in the US still use CDMA phones, which are tied to service by their IMEI number. They come preloaded with the carrier's software and they buy enough phones to get custom versions with many features restricted. Verizon is the 800lb gorilla in this arena, but I currently have US Cellular which is the same way (not for much longer, though). They routinely prevent all multimedia transfers though the usb interface, instead requiring that all such transfers occur over "the network", thus generating an additional revenue stream. Take a picture? $0.25 to transfer it. Want a ringtone? Buy from the company store or pay for the data transfer - just $9.99/mo plus per-kb pricing. In return, their customers get a "free" phone along with a 24 month commitment to a service plan that will likley run no less than $40. Bargain, huh?
Other players in the US market use gsm, and you can buy your phone and service separately. Here's the rub: you can go pay full price for your phone on the open market and buy just a sim, but you'll pay the same monthly (phone subsidy) fee that the guy next to is paying, and he got a $450 equipment discount in return for the next 24 months of his business. Most gsm providers don't lock their house-branded phones too much. BTW - that $450 is a max benefit - a $200 phone would just be "free" or you might get $25-$50 back as a rebate. The retail stores will only spot you about $175-$200, but the serious online merchants will also give you the $200-$250 contract kickback they get after you stay for 6 months. These phones are, however, "locked" to the carrier, though there seems to be many outlets for unlocking service. Also, it is legal for a phone owner (under contract or not) to unlock their own handset, but the law doesn't require the carrier to actually help in the unlocking process (i.e. they can't be compelled to unlock your phone, even if you request it).
Aside from the locking thing, there's really very little to complain about if you want a new phone. The discount is about $175, and if you want to break the contract (cancel before 2 years is up), you owe them $175 cancellation fee. This seems wrong if you're in, say, month 20, as you've already paid most of the money back through the monthly fees. Except that there is no drop in rate after 24 months, nor is there any lower rates if you bring your own phone. You may as well just get a new phone every two years. Brought to you by the country who views the whole world as disposable.