Depending on who you talk to, the price premium for adding an integrated ATSC receiver to a television set should be around $50-$100
So why aren't they doing it? All local stations starting with PBS have digital on the air. No retailer that I know of is demo'ing a receiver for it. There are walls of analog TV's showing a local channel and there are some HDTV's showing a demo satelite or TIVO channel. Nobody is demo'ing a digital tv, high deffenition or otherwise on a realtime local broadcast.
Growing up, some got color TV's when they saw them in the local store or a neighbor had one. I remember going to the neighbors to watch the commercials. They were the first things on TV in color. Later the local stations got the equipment to produce color shows.
Fast forward to today. I don't know anybody watching over the air broadcast digital TV even though it's been on for some time. I don't know any local retailers showing digital TV's and demonstrating them on the local broadcasts. In short, it's not being promoted in the slightest.
Even in households with cable or satellite, many have secondary sets that rely on over-the-air signals.
In large markets over the air is a very small fraction of the viewers. Try counting rooftop antennas. There won't be enough volume to get the price down. The high price will continue to reduce the over the air viewers. It is a niche market with little profit margin. Many people have secondary sets simply because it is inexpensive. I have seen no indication a digital TV will be inexpensive. There have been predictions, but I haven't seen any sets.
The last numbers that I saw, said that about 15% of American households relied exclusively on over-the-air broadcasting for their television reception.
Welcome to rural America. This part of the population will have a high priced set to buy. Many won't bother. Few will bother to get several sets. The DVD, VHS, Nitendo monitor will continue to be the older sets for some time. They can be replaced by NTSC monitors instead of a receiver. This will drive down the volume of receivers sold. Low volume does not provide the high volume price break that is expected.
Some rural viewers have analog signals full of multipath where they could catch the evening news, but won't be able to get good enough reception to decode a digital broadcast. (Digital TV is OK with minor multipath, but fringe analog areas are digital dead zones) If they can't get broadband internet, many of these rural viewers are going dark on many channels.
Receivers with screen sizes 13" to 24" -- 100% of all such units must include DTV tuners effective July 1, 2007;
I know the mandate, but in the 60's when color started to catch on, there wasn't the internet to compete with television. Due to market economics, the first generation of small sets with digital tuners will have little demand. High quality will be met by the sales of monitors and subscription content. The content providers will provide the Dish reciever or Cable box. Not many will opt for small tv's with expensive tuners when a computer monitor and a Torrent will provide better content than anything over the air.
Drive down your street. Count the over the air TV antenna's on the roofs. The houses with antennas are the only ones in the market for a digital TV. The ones without antennas are in the market for just a monitor. The market is very small for small expensive televisions. There are too many alternatives to over the air broadcasting.
The mandate applies to receivers, not monitors. There will be lots of monitors sold, but few receivers. It's a money saving and commercial skipping thing. The internet is making an end run past the broadcast flag.
If the FCC wants the john Q public to get Digital Television, Why isn't this stuff on over the air local TV broadcasts?
The original Battlestar series I watched on network TV in the late 1970's. The big thing keeping joe sixpack from demanding digital television sets is the lack of broadcast content.
There are lots of digital ready monitors on the market and HDTV monitors, but a very small ammount of Digital Televisions. Dorm dwellers simply don't have the space for a home theatre solution nor the budget to buy a TV that includes a tuner. There are set top tuners, but they cost more than my current television. There is little incentive to spend the bucks simply because of the lack of quality content. BitTorrent is making an end run past the content/broadcastflag/overtheair stalemate.
The FCC deadline will come and go, but market forces will simply mean the end of analog over the air is simply the end of free over the air TV.
I'm hoping my prediction is not true, but so far, I have no plans in the future for an over the air digital television. I'll get broadband instead.
How is IBM, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, Dell and Novell a monolith? These companies compete with each other, unlike MS who competes with MS until recently when Mozilla and Open Office invaded their turf.
Microsoft has been offering us free software. They have yet to mention what the catch is, so we'll have to see how it all turns out.
In many places the catch is convert all IT programs to MS only. It's the only thing you will ever need, so that's all that needs training. Some places reject the offer as they train UNIX in one form or another and do not wish to be IIS only.
I didn't see anything phishy in FireFox 1.0.2. I looked at the source, and nothing _looked_ untoward. What exactly did you see? What did you click on?
I clicked on the spec pdf. The JS logo joined the URl in the left end of the bar. It also didn't use my choice of font. Both are signs someone is trying to obfuscate the URL from me. This always raises my defences.
The main page looks fine. Clicking on the PDF was the start of the weird stuff.
As I said before, a PDF should not run javascript.
I bailed from the site. I didn't try to read the page source that loads the PDF document. I got more than just the PDF document that dinked with my browser so I didn't trust anything presented from that point onward. I'm a little paranoid that way.
I do my fair share. I know the do not X-ray is always ignored. They assure me the exposure is very low and won't bother high speed film. They x-ray everything regardless what I may request. They still want to hand inspect it. It still does a good job shielding and it's the right size for carry on. Other than hand inspections and demonstrating the electronics boot up properly (so they are what the case indicates they are), I have had no problems. They even made sure my pocket flashlight worked.
Here are some very interesting additional Annexes.
Is that a phishing page? The first thing I noticed was the overlaying of the URL bar with a JavaScript overlay. PDF's are not supposed to be Jasvascript.
I was outta there as soon as Javascript ran instead of Acrobat. Call me paranoid, but that's the kind of stuff normaly seen on the sites refered to in phishing e-mails.
Stuff it in an old aluminized mylar potato chip bag, roll it up and stuff it in your pocket. If asked, say it was raining cats and doga at my last stop. I didn't want it to get wet. The added advantage is the tag is unreadable inside the folded up bag.
I already have one. I travel with an ammo box. It's virtualy indestructable. I use it to carry my PDA, phone, camera, etc. Airport security does not like them and they always ask me to open it. I tell them it's 100% effective in preventing the electronics from interfearing with aircraft electronics. This is fine. I wouldn't want ammo boxes to be used to conceal box cutters or handguns so an inspection boarding a flight is not a problem. I mark it High speed film and sensitive electronics, please do not X-ray. The box would protect RFID from being hacked by the casual passerby.
Don't set up a pattern. If you always post anarchist rants on Wednesdays in a 10 mile radius, the FBI could just stake out every wireless access point until you show up.
It's a little hard to stake out every wireless access point if you wardrive with a random MAC address and avoid the business points. Hit a random appartment complex or take a small TV dish and hit some downtown office tower 5 miles away. If they can't see your signal from the street, you are a little hard to pinpoint. DF in the downtown concrete jungle makes triangulation difficult. Especialy if you are using a uni-directional narrow beam antenna and low power.
At 60-20, they may be effecint. But they're still not powerfull.
Very true, however they are plenty powerful enough for maintaining your speed going down a hill instead of riding the brakes, and work great in slowing down for the line of traffic at the light ahead. Very seldom do I need hydraulic brakes above 20 MPH. About the only times are when the idiot in the slowed lane going 30 decides to jump into the fast lane in front of me. Then I do apply more brakes. That slowing mode is the exception and is not the usual way to slow down.
To stop from 20-0 using the motor, you would have to apply a current, and even then, it wouldn't be as powerful as normal mechanical brakes.
Again true. The energy needing dissapated stopping from 20-0 isn't much. Therefore, little power is wasted. Holding stop with mechanical brakes on a hill certanly uses less power then holding a stop on a hill by providing torque on an electric motor. I have no problam with having dual brakes. I feel it is both more effecient and safer than having a single set of brakes like a traditional car. If I lose the electric end, the hydraulic end is still there. If I lose the hydraulic end, the electric will get me slow enough before impact to minimise the damage to me and the vehicle. A single point of failure vehicle does not have the safety of this redundancy.
Hence cars like the Primus will have dual braking systems for quite some time.
Thank goodness. They both have a use. There is no need to eliminate either one.
Even cable hoist elevators have dual braking. Slowing for a floor is done electricaly. Stopping on a floor is done with a mechanical brake. It's done this way for solid engineering reasons.
There is little wearing of the mechanical brake and there is little overheating of the motor holding the elevator at a floor.
Then, my understanding is that most hybrid and electrical cars use more like 250-400 volt battery systems
I only know about the Prius which I have. It does have 2 stage brakes. If you are not paying attention, then you are unlikely to notice. They limit the torque on the electrical side of things to improve battery life and not overheat electrical components. Remember Torque in an electric motor is directly related to current. Light pressure on the brake pedal from a 60 MPH speed uses straight electrical braking. The hydraulic system (conventional) is right behind the electrical. When the electrical generation starts to sag, the pedal sags slightly applying the hydraulic. This transistion is mostly not noticable. If you stomp on the brakes, you apply both the electric at full torque, and apply hydraulic conventional anti-lock brakes. The electric braking only keeps you out of the hydraulics by the generated current. If it isn't enough or it goes away due to slowing speed, your applied pressure then goes right into the master cylinder.
It's about as safe as you can get having a fly by wire brake backed up by hydraulics.
Probably the only way to make motor braking as powerful would be to apply a current to the motor (basically, putting it in reverse). But that isn't very efficient.
It takes much more energy to get a car from 30-60 than it takes to get it from 0-30. Doubling the speed of a car increases it's kinetic energy 4X. Using the electric to slow the car from 60-20 is very efficient. You don't lose much by using hydraulic brakes from 20-0. You do extend the life of the hydraulic brakes by not dumping all that heat into them. You've put at least 3/4's of your kenetic energy into the battery instead of the brake drum as heat. There is no need to reverse the electric motors. Use a voltage converter (the Pius inverter is bi-directional) to load the motor until you no longer get much power from them, then remove the feedback force from the pedal allowing it to sag into the hydraulics.
I have 50K miles on my Prius, and the brake pads look new.
You don't get the full 50 hp of a gasoline motor from 0 rpm.
The same is true for electric. I have a Hybrid. From 0RPM up to a point they just list torque. After that speed, then they list a power rating. It makes for smooth starts. I get a steady torque for pulling out, not a rapidly diminishing torque as speed picks up. I like it. It's especialy nice in wet, icy, snow, or other slick condidtions. I get a steady pull out from a stop instead of high initial torque that spins tires.
Wrong. When our thumb gets tired of flipping channels looking for something that isn't an advertisement, then it just gets turned off. You know the phrase "100 channels and nothing on". It's so true. That's why I don't watch over the air TV anymore. Too little contnet. I've moved to the Internet. Content can be searched and found.
I'd rather go entirely without TV than be obliged to watch ads, and I along with many others would gladly PAY for content without ads if necessary.
Welcome to the Internet. It's doing an end run past the time spent watching the boob tube for many. That's why the big transistion to Digital TV by the FCC has hit such a roadblock.
Almost nobody is watching free over the air broadcast TV. Drive down any residential neighborhood and count the rooftop TV antennas.
Nobody makes Digital Televisions because nobody is spending the bucks on them. There are lots of Digital TV ready monitors and a few set top boxes, but there is not enough demand to provide Digital TV receivers (Digital tuner in the set). It just isn't worth the money to buy the set to watch the over the air junk.
If enough people rejected mindless and inane advertizing, you might end up with ad-free channels and seperate advertizing channels where the ads were good enough that people WANTED to watch them.
Unfortunately thats why free over the air channels are overburdened by advertisements. It's paid for by advertisements. The viewership is so low, can't get much per ad, so they must sell more advertisment space which leaves less room for quality programming, which leaves less veiwers of the advertising channels, which leaves less money per advertisement which....
The downward death spiral is in full circle. Raising the cost of the recievers by switching to Digital TV killing analog will be the final nail. The nail will be very sharp if the broadcast flag is implimented and sharpened more by forcing a breakage of TIVO's.
My prediction is... Broadband Internet programs by demand will replace TV. I no longer catch the local 6:00 news. I go online to the local TV website and choose the clips of interest instead. I don't have to buy a new TV.
Last time I bought a car, it came with a stereo already in it, yet, this wasn't an antitrust or monopoly concern.
Part of the reason is Volkswagon doesn't make the radios. They are from Blaupunkt. Toyota does not make their radios. They are Alpine, also from a third party. Some GM cars have Bose Autosound. Philco/RCA makes radios for Ford.
Poor choice for an example. If you wanted a car and your choices were either a Ford Explorer, or a VW rabbit Deisel, and most of the fuel stations had gas pumps that interface the Ford but not the VW, then you would have a monopoly issue.
Only if you are paying credit bills. Utilities and rent don't count unless you are late, then it builds a bad report.
Been there, done that for many years. Paying your utilities and such by check does not get anything reported to the credit reporting agencies. Your report if it even exists simply shows no credit history. I didn't have credit, couldn't get credit. Getting a student loan is one way out. Another is buying something and making a massive down payment with store credit on the remainder. My first credit was at Radio Shack for the M100 laptop. (boy does that date me) I put 300 down and paid off the bill in the next two months. (it was high interest in-store credit. I had no desire to carry much of a balance at near 25% interest.) About a year later to the day, I started getting the offers in the mail. Credit was established.
Either pay on your student loan, or buy something at a big box store with a big down. The big down helps sway reluctant credit managers who are shy of no credit history. Then pay that sucker off in full within a month or two. In-store credit is high interest. Oh and avoid the rent-to-own rip-off's. They sell $300 items for $600 or more and still charge outrageous interest. Check the prices. Save a few bucks and hit the big box instead. You will get at least twice as much for the same money.
And once they get used to XP's features, they'll be reluctant to change, even if that forces them to start paying for it because of new hoops they have to jump through.
They will do what a lot of people do. Use Windows 98 and Office 97. No auth problems and works fine for most stuff on a budget, especialy if it's borrowed from someone. At 15 hours/month on dial-up, there won't be many who are intersted in all the many MS updates to XP.
The means to properly operate a computer is as far beyond the reach of the average person as is the ability to tune their car and replace the fan belt. It's not that their stupid,it's that the concepts are completely alien to them. What seems trivial to you is a goddamned nightmare to most adults who grew up without touching a computer.
Looked under the hood of a newer car. Try to get past the Check Engine light?
Much software is built the same way. No documentation. Documentation that amounts to does it have gas and oil. If the thing is running rough, the documentation dies long before a solution is reached. Ever use Windows Help for example. Do you have any idea how often I've reached the end of the Windows Help, but not resolved the problem?
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Depending on who you talk to, the price premium for adding an integrated ATSC receiver to a television set should be around $50-$100
So why aren't they doing it? All local stations starting with PBS have digital on the air. No retailer that I know of is demo'ing a receiver for it. There are walls of analog TV's showing a local channel and there are some HDTV's showing a demo satelite or TIVO channel. Nobody is demo'ing a digital tv, high deffenition or otherwise on a realtime local broadcast.
Growing up, some got color TV's when they saw them in the local store or a neighbor had one. I remember going to the neighbors to watch the commercials. They were the first things on TV in color. Later the local stations got the equipment to produce color shows.
Fast forward to today. I don't know anybody watching over the air broadcast digital TV even though it's been on for some time. I don't know any local retailers showing digital TV's and demonstrating them on the local broadcasts. In short, it's not being promoted in the slightest.
Even in households with cable or satellite, many have secondary sets that rely on over-the-air signals.
In large markets over the air is a very small fraction of the viewers. Try counting rooftop antennas. There won't be enough volume to get the price down. The high price will continue to reduce the over the air viewers. It is a niche market with little profit margin. Many people have secondary sets simply because it is inexpensive. I have seen no indication a digital TV will be inexpensive. There have been predictions, but I haven't seen any sets.
The last numbers that I saw, said that about 15% of American households relied exclusively on over-the-air broadcasting for their television reception.
Welcome to rural America. This part of the population will have a high priced set to buy. Many won't bother. Few will bother to get several sets. The DVD, VHS, Nitendo monitor will continue to be the older sets for some time. They can be replaced by NTSC monitors instead of a receiver. This will drive down the volume of receivers sold. Low volume does not provide the high volume price break that is expected.
Some rural viewers have analog signals full of multipath where they could catch the evening news, but won't be able to get good enough reception to decode a digital broadcast. (Digital TV is OK with minor multipath, but fringe analog areas are digital dead zones) If they can't get broadband internet, many of these rural viewers are going dark on many channels.
Receivers with screen sizes 13" to 24" -- 100% of all such units must include DTV tuners effective July 1, 2007;
I know the mandate, but in the 60's when color started to catch on, there wasn't the internet to compete with television. Due to market economics, the first generation of small sets with digital tuners will have little demand. High quality will be met by the sales of monitors and subscription content. The content providers will provide the Dish reciever or Cable box. Not many will opt for small tv's with expensive tuners when a computer monitor and a Torrent will provide better content than anything over the air.
Drive down your street. Count the over the air TV antenna's on the roofs. The houses with antennas are the only ones in the market for a digital TV. The ones without antennas are in the market for just a monitor. The market is very small for small expensive televisions. There are too many alternatives to over the air broadcasting.
The mandate applies to receivers, not monitors. There will be lots of monitors sold, but few receivers. It's a money saving and commercial skipping thing. The internet is making an end run past the broadcast flag.
If the FCC wants the john Q public to get Digital Television, Why isn't this stuff on over the air local TV broadcasts?
The original Battlestar series I watched on network TV in the late 1970's. The big thing keeping joe sixpack from demanding digital television sets is the lack of broadcast content.
There are lots of digital ready monitors on the market and HDTV monitors, but a very small ammount of Digital Televisions. Dorm dwellers simply don't have the space for a home theatre solution nor the budget to buy a TV that includes a tuner. There are set top tuners, but they cost more than my current television. There is little incentive to spend the bucks simply because of the lack of quality content. BitTorrent is making an end run past the content/broadcastflag/overtheair stalemate.
The FCC deadline will come and go, but market forces will simply mean the end of analog over the air is simply the end of free over the air TV.
I'm hoping my prediction is not true, but so far, I have no plans in the future for an over the air digital television. I'll get broadband instead.
Isn't this just trading one monolith for another?
How is IBM, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, Dell and Novell a monolith? These companies compete with each other, unlike MS who competes with MS until recently when Mozilla and Open Office invaded their turf.
Microsoft has been offering us free software. They have yet to mention what the catch is, so we'll have to see how it all turns out.
In many places the catch is convert all IT programs to MS only. It's the only thing you will ever need, so that's all that needs training.
Some places reject the offer as they train UNIX in one form or another and do not wish to be IIS only.
and so far I've saved myself $126.42 with my diesel ... in 1 month.
I don't spend that much on fuel per month. Getting that kind of savings is not possible.
Disclaimer.. I already have a Prius. I only spend about $40/month for fuel at todays rates.
I didn't see anything phishy in FireFox 1.0.2. I looked at the source, and nothing _looked_ untoward. What exactly did you see? What did you click on?
I clicked on the spec pdf. The JS logo joined the URl in the left end of the bar. It also didn't use my choice of font. Both are signs someone is trying to obfuscate the URL from me. This always raises my defences.
The main page looks fine. Clicking on the PDF was the start of the weird stuff.
As I said before, a PDF should not run javascript.
I bailed from the site. I didn't try to read the page source that loads the PDF document. I got more than just the PDF document that dinked with my browser so I didn't trust anything presented from that point onward. I'm a little paranoid that way.
You obviously don't travel much.
I do my fair share. I know the do not X-ray is always ignored. They assure me the exposure is very low and won't bother high speed film. They x-ray everything regardless what I may request. They still want to hand inspect it. It still does a good job shielding and it's the right size for carry on. Other than hand inspections and demonstrating the electronics boot up properly (so they are what the case indicates they are), I have had no problems. They even made sure my pocket flashlight worked.
Here are some very interesting additional Annexes.
Is that a phishing page? The first thing I noticed was the overlaying of the URL bar with a JavaScript overlay. PDF's are not supposed to be Jasvascript.
I was outta there as soon as Javascript ran instead of Acrobat. Call me paranoid, but that's the kind of stuff normaly seen on the sites refered to in phishing e-mails.
I think I'll carry it in an aluminum foil pouch.
Stuff it in an old aluminized mylar potato chip bag, roll it up and stuff it in your pocket. If asked, say it was raining cats and doga at my last stop. I didn't want it to get wet. The added advantage is the tag is unreadable inside the folded up bag.
Someone is going to need a faraday cage.
I already have one. I travel with an ammo box. It's virtualy indestructable. I use it to carry my PDA, phone, camera, etc. Airport security does not like them and they always ask me to open it. I tell them it's 100% effective in preventing the electronics from interfearing with aircraft electronics. This is fine. I wouldn't want ammo boxes to be used to conceal box cutters or handguns so an inspection boarding a flight is not a problem. I mark it High speed film and sensitive electronics, please do not X-ray. The box would protect RFID from being hacked by the casual passerby.
Don't set up a pattern. If you always post anarchist rants on Wednesdays in a 10 mile radius, the FBI could just stake out every wireless access point until you show up.
It's a little hard to stake out every wireless access point if you wardrive with a random MAC address and avoid the business points. Hit a random appartment complex or take a small TV dish and hit some downtown office tower 5 miles away. If they can't see your signal from the street, you are a little hard to pinpoint. DF in the downtown concrete jungle makes triangulation difficult. Especialy if you are using a uni-directional narrow beam antenna and low power.
At 60-20, they may be effecint. But they're still not powerfull.
Very true, however they are plenty powerful enough for maintaining your speed going down a hill instead of riding the brakes, and work great in slowing down for the line of traffic at the light ahead. Very seldom do I need hydraulic brakes above 20 MPH. About the only times are when the idiot in the slowed lane going 30 decides to jump into the fast lane in front of me. Then I do apply more brakes. That slowing mode is the exception and is not the usual way to slow down.
To stop from 20-0 using the motor, you would have to apply a current, and even then, it wouldn't be as powerful as normal mechanical brakes.
Again true. The energy needing dissapated stopping from 20-0 isn't much. Therefore, little power is wasted. Holding stop with mechanical brakes on a hill certanly uses less power then holding a stop on a hill by providing torque on an electric motor. I have no problam with having dual brakes. I feel it is both more effecient and safer than having a single set of brakes like a traditional car. If I lose the electric end, the hydraulic end is still there. If I lose the hydraulic end, the electric will get me slow enough before impact to minimise the damage to me and the vehicle. A single point of failure vehicle does not have the safety of this redundancy.
Hence cars like the Primus will have dual braking systems for quite some time.
Thank goodness. They both have a use. There is no need to eliminate either one.
Even cable hoist elevators have dual braking. Slowing for a floor is done electricaly. Stopping on a floor is done with a mechanical brake. It's done this way for solid engineering reasons.
There is little wearing of the mechanical brake and there is little overheating of the motor holding the elevator at a floor.
And why for the love of all that is good and right were your users coming from traceable IPs?
For the un-informed.. Use a Dial-Up ISP. Fresh address every connection. Use a proxy via SSH. Be sure the proxy is secure and doesn't keep logs.
Then, my understanding is that most hybrid and electrical cars use more like 250-400 volt battery systems
I only know about the Prius which I have. It does have 2 stage brakes. If you are not paying attention, then you are unlikely to notice. They limit the torque on the electrical side of things to improve battery life and not overheat electrical components. Remember Torque in an electric motor is directly related to current. Light pressure on the brake pedal from a 60 MPH speed uses straight electrical braking. The hydraulic system (conventional) is right behind the electrical. When the electrical generation starts to sag, the pedal sags slightly applying the hydraulic. This transistion is mostly not noticable. If you stomp on the brakes, you apply both the electric at full torque, and apply hydraulic conventional anti-lock brakes. The electric braking only keeps you out of the hydraulics by the generated current. If it isn't enough or it goes away due to slowing speed, your applied pressure then goes right into the master cylinder.
It's about as safe as you can get having a fly by wire brake backed up by hydraulics.
Probably the only way to make motor braking as powerful would be to apply a current to the motor (basically, putting it in reverse). But that isn't very efficient.
It takes much more energy to get a car from 30-60 than it takes to get it from 0-30. Doubling the speed of a car increases it's kinetic energy 4X. Using the electric to slow the car from 60-20 is very efficient. You don't lose much by using hydraulic brakes from 20-0. You do extend the life of the hydraulic brakes by not dumping all that heat into them. You've put at least 3/4's of your kenetic energy into the battery instead of the brake drum as heat. There is no need to reverse the electric motors. Use a voltage converter (the Pius inverter is bi-directional) to load the motor until you no longer get much power from them, then remove the feedback force from the pedal allowing it to sag into the hydraulics.
I have 50K miles on my Prius, and the brake pads look new.
Then, my understanding is that most hybrid and electrical cars use more like 250-400 volt battery systems
The older Prius sedan uses a 270 volt battery. The new hatchback uses a 500 Volt battery.
You are right on the money. The electric side of things is pretty much limited to 20KW just to not shorten the life of the battery.
You could have an indicator light and a device that gives a quiet humm
In the Toyota Prius, the electric coolant pump hums. The digital speedometer in the dash has a READY light. Any more non-issues needed to be solved?
You don't get the full 50 hp of a gasoline motor from 0 rpm.
The same is true for electric. I have a Hybrid. From 0RPM up to a point they just list torque. After that speed, then they list a power rating. It makes for smooth starts. I get a steady torque for pulling out, not a rapidly diminishing torque as speed picks up. I like it. It's especialy nice in wet, icy, snow, or other slick condidtions. I get a steady pull out from a stop instead of high initial torque that spins tires.
You become numb to the advertising...
Wrong. When our thumb gets tired of flipping channels looking for something that isn't an advertisement, then it just gets turned off. You know the phrase "100 channels and nothing on". It's so true. That's why I don't watch over the air TV anymore. Too little contnet. I've moved to the Internet. Content can be searched and found.
I'd rather go entirely without TV than be obliged to watch ads, and I along with many others would gladly PAY for content without ads if necessary.
Welcome to the Internet. It's doing an end run past the time spent watching the boob tube for many. That's why the big transistion to Digital TV by the FCC has hit such a roadblock.
Almost nobody is watching free over the air broadcast TV. Drive down any residential neighborhood and count the rooftop TV antennas.
Nobody makes Digital Televisions because nobody is spending the bucks on them. There are lots of Digital TV ready monitors and a few set top boxes, but there is not enough demand to provide Digital TV receivers (Digital tuner in the set). It just isn't worth the money to buy the set to watch the over the air junk.
If enough people rejected mindless and inane advertizing, you might end up with ad-free channels and seperate advertizing channels where the ads were good enough that people WANTED to watch them.
Unfortunately thats why free over the air channels are overburdened by advertisements. It's paid for by advertisements. The viewership is so low, can't get much per ad, so they must sell more advertisment space which leaves less room for quality programming, which leaves less veiwers of the advertising channels, which leaves less money per advertisement which....
The downward death spiral is in full circle. Raising the cost of the recievers by switching to Digital TV killing analog will be the final nail. The nail will be very sharp if the broadcast flag is implimented and sharpened more by forcing a breakage of TIVO's.
My prediction is... Broadband Internet programs by demand will replace TV. I no longer catch the local 6:00 news. I go online to the local TV website and choose the clips of interest instead. I don't have to buy a new TV.
Last time I bought a car, it came with a stereo already in it, yet, this wasn't an antitrust or monopoly concern.
Part of the reason is Volkswagon doesn't make the radios. They are from Blaupunkt. Toyota does not make their radios. They are Alpine, also from a third party. Some GM cars have Bose Autosound. Philco/RCA makes radios for Ford.
Poor choice for an example. If you wanted a car and your choices were either a Ford Explorer, or a VW rabbit Deisel, and most of the fuel stations had gas pumps that interface the Ford but not the VW, then you would have a monopoly issue.
usually paying in full builds credit
Only if you are paying credit bills. Utilities and rent don't count unless you are late, then it builds a bad report.
Been there, done that for many years. Paying your utilities and such by check does not get anything reported to the credit reporting agencies. Your report if it even exists simply shows no credit history. I didn't have credit, couldn't get credit. Getting a student loan is one way out. Another is buying something and making a massive down payment with store credit on the remainder. My first credit was at Radio Shack for the M100 laptop. (boy does that date me) I put 300 down and paid off the bill in the next two months. (it was high interest in-store credit. I had no desire to carry much of a balance at near 25% interest.) About a year later to the day, I started getting the offers in the mail. Credit was established.
Either pay on your student loan, or buy something at a big box store with a big down. The big down helps sway reluctant credit managers who are shy of no credit history. Then pay that sucker off in full within a month or two. In-store credit is high interest. Oh and avoid the rent-to-own rip-off's. They sell $300 items for $600 or more and still charge outrageous interest. Check the prices. Save a few bucks and hit the big box instead. You will get at least twice as much for the same money.
And once they get used to XP's features, they'll be reluctant to change, even if that forces them to start paying for it because of new hoops they have to jump through.
They will do what a lot of people do. Use Windows 98 and Office 97. No auth problems and works fine for most stuff on a budget, especialy if it's borrowed from someone. At 15 hours/month on dial-up, there won't be many who are intersted in all the many MS updates to XP.
I have worked on at least 100 home PCs in my lifetime and have not found a single one that was free of pornography.
Those professionals fix their own machines. They are too busy to spend looking at other distractions.
The means to properly operate a computer is as far beyond the reach of the average person as is the ability to tune their car and replace the fan belt. It's not that their stupid,it's that the concepts are completely alien to them. What seems trivial to you is a goddamned nightmare to most adults who grew up without touching a computer.
Looked under the hood of a newer car. Try to get past the Check Engine light?
Much software is built the same way. No documentation. Documentation that amounts to does it have gas and oil. If the thing is running rough, the documentation dies long before a solution is reached. Ever use Windows Help for example. Do you have any idea how often I've reached the end of the Windows Help, but not resolved the problem?