I'm certain that if Sirius/XM decided to start putting commercials on their music channels, they'd lose many of their subscribers pretty quickly. I have three Sirius tuners and use them a LOT, and I wouldn't hesitate to drop my subscriptions if they did that.
Sirius and XM have a LOT more to lose by playing commercials. Cable TV still offers something over broadcast TV (it's usually more reliable and offers more channels), but those advantages in satellite radio are less pronounced for people who live where there are radio stations and aren't on the road all the time. (And let's face it - there are dozens of music channels on satellite but I doubt most subscribers listen to more than 4 or 6, so the advantage of having more channels available isn't as great as it is with cable TV.)
Also: does HBO have ads? I don't get HBO, but I believe if you pay for that service you get to watch movies and other series without advertisements; at least, that used to be their selling point. If that's still true then they've obviously made that business model work.
Off-topic, but can I take advantage of this? I have a Fujitsu C2230 laptop that works very well under Linux except that it doesn't resume (suspends fine, though, as far as I can tell) - it locks up. This limits its usefulness on trips - I use Windows when traveling because I don't want to wait for the laptop to boot up every time.
The laptop is over 4 years old and came out when ACPI was rather new so I assume it's some quirk in the hardware that's causing the problem. I've tried unloading every hardware driver I can (Atheros wifi, shutting down X windows, etc) before suspending, but it still locks up. Other than that it works almost perfectly, so I hate to replace it just based on that issue.
I would like to know what they intend to do with this information. Sue the people who watched these 'illegal' videos? I could see giving them info on the people that posted the videos, but info on the viewers just feels like a fishing expedition.
I'll third this. I have a decent Dell monitor at work, and I had an old 17" Viewsonic CRT at home that was annoying because it was slightly unfocused in the middle of the screen. Having a decent display at work only made it worse because I knew how good the picture could be.
I was happy with the Dell at work, so based on that and the recommendations of a couple friends, I bought a Dell Ultrasharp 22" widescreen earlier this year, and I've been much happier with my home PC since.
My only gripe is that both Dell LCDs I use have one dead pixel each.
Of course you still need cell phone service for Onstar to work. (And digital service now...cars with the older analog Onstar phones are now unable to use the service.) I wonder about the rural areas you mention actually having digital cell phone service.
I'm not disagreeing with you, just pointing out that in some of those areas, Onstar might not do any good anyway.
I've been using pairnic.com for all of mine. No jerking around, multiple warnings in advance of expiration, and I think I paid $50 for 5 years last time I renewed.
I dunno. I just cleaned my gutters today, and it took me perhaps 30 minutes. Of course, I have a single-level house so that's probably helping (a 6' ladder is all I need), and it's not a huge house.
I would like to have something better though. My neighbor has gutters that have a ledge over the top of them so water can get in but little or nothing else. And they have a lifetime warranty: if they ever get clogged the company will come out and clean them for free. He's had them for quite a few years and hasn't had a problem.
But this robot doesn't really seem like a good solution to me. It's not that hard to reach in and grab the leaves/pine needles and toss them in a bag. I imagine $100 could buy something to protect at least one of my gutters from getting leaves/needles in there in the first place (or at least reduce the amount).
It really doesn't matter whether he's being an asshat or not - you could be doing 70 mph in the right lane in a 55 mph zone with three completely empty lanes to your left, and someone would still be tailgating you. At least that's how it is here in DC.
The long and short of it is, transportation is something that the market will always do a better job of providing than the government. Say what? Name a transportation mode that isn't funded in part by government.
The theory is this: letting people and goods move around easily is good for economies. So the money spent on the infrastructure comes back in the form of tax revenue.
I read Trains magazine religiously each month. This month there was an article about a train (Amtrak) that Missouri pays for to run between St. Louis and Kansas City (IIRC). Ridership on the train was very good, but unfortunately the track it uses has a lot of freight trains as well, so the Amtrak trains are frequently late, and ridership is declining. Missouri did a study and found that it'd cost $45 million to improve the line, and they allocated $10 million to double track a few sections.
Meanwhile, as the article points out, if Missouri instead decided to build a 6-lane highway, the federal gov't would kick in 80% of the funding.
Of note, there are multiple at-grade crossings on this trains route - these are rarely found on other high speed train lines for obvious reasons. No there aren't. During the Great Depression, the Pennsylvania Railroad spent a ton of money to improve the DC-NYC Northeast Corridor to eliminate all at-grade crossings. There are a few at-grade crossings north of New York (closer to Boston, actually), but that's not the section of the line you were talking about.
I used to get religious chain letters. Those were annoying because they usually contained all kinds of tripe about how the phrase "under God" in the US Pledge of Allegiance was a good thing or similar idiotic issues. The most annoying part of them was that they usually ended with something like, "If you don't agree, just delete this," which basically says that it's okay for them to share their opinion with me, but they don't want to hear mine back.
I, of course, would gladly send my opinion back to the person that sent it to me. She no longer sends them to me.
Can you please define "very accurate"? I think we can now reliably get 3 meter accuracy if WAAS is available, right? Apparently these new satellites should be better than that, if the Wikipedia article I read on them is any indication, but I haven't heard a number saying how much better.
That's pretty amazing to me that the DNC didn't work for you - the telemarketing calls I got dropped to about zero (politicians and non-profits still call me, along with companies that I currently deal with). I think since they instituted the DNC I've gotten exactly one illegal telemarketing call, which I reported.
When I moved to my new house I forgot to register the new phone number, and I got several calls in the first few weeks. I registered right after the first one and after a two or three weeks they stopped (again, except for the three excluded groups).
The biggest problem I'm having is that there are apparently dozens of creditors calling for the previous residents of my house (I get their mail too, even after two years of living there), who did NOT have the same phone number I do. They were renters, not owners, so I know absolutely nothing about them. I get calls for them every two weeks or so. I want a "Do Not Call New Residents And Ask Them Where The Previous Residents Are" List.
it does lose files once in a while. or rather they become unnaccessible and can't be deleted. so far the only fixe i've found is --rebuild-tree Ah ha! I had that happen to me in 2001 or 2002. I finally had to format the disk to get rid of the file, and I switched to something else because I no longer trusted ReiserFS. (I couldn't find any way of fixing it, or even anyone else that had same thing happen.)
The laptops in question were Dells. I assume it was default since both laptops were doing it and neither person is very tech-savvy. One didn't even understand the concept of a USB thumb drive, for example, so I'm having trouble believing they both set their laptops up to automatically connect to peer-to-peer networks.
(Do people actually use the peer-to-peer mode anyway? In over four years of playing with Wifi, this weekend was the first time I saw a peer-to-peer network, and it wasn't even set up intentionally.)
From playing with a friend's WinXP laptop over the weekend, I can see how it happens: Windows will automatically connect to any network it can find, even peer-to-peer. I'm sure this behavior can be disabled, but it's probably set up that way by default by the manufacturers to make it easier for users. I realize this is old news to most people, but I don't use WinXP very often and was a bit surprised to see it connect to a peer-to-peer network.
(My laptop has WinXP on it, but it's an older laptop - 4 years - and it uses Atheros software to connect and only attempts to connect to the network I activate. Under Linux, my usual OS, I set up a script for it to connect to the SSID I specify.)
Plus, people do use others access points intentionally - some friends of mine were doing it over the weekend when we were camping at a spot that didn't have any internet access.
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I actually just did that a couple weeks ago. It worked great!
I do get occasional dropouts from thick trees and whatever, but that's still far better than listening to FM commercials.
I'm certain that if Sirius/XM decided to start putting commercials on their music channels, they'd lose many of their subscribers pretty quickly. I have three Sirius tuners and use them a LOT, and I wouldn't hesitate to drop my subscriptions if they did that.
Sirius and XM have a LOT more to lose by playing commercials. Cable TV still offers something over broadcast TV (it's usually more reliable and offers more channels), but those advantages in satellite radio are less pronounced for people who live where there are radio stations and aren't on the road all the time. (And let's face it - there are dozens of music channels on satellite but I doubt most subscribers listen to more than 4 or 6, so the advantage of having more channels available isn't as great as it is with cable TV.)
Also: does HBO have ads? I don't get HBO, but I believe if you pay for that service you get to watch movies and other series without advertisements; at least, that used to be their selling point. If that's still true then they've obviously made that business model work.
Off-topic, but can I take advantage of this? I have a Fujitsu C2230 laptop that works very well under Linux except that it doesn't resume (suspends fine, though, as far as I can tell) - it locks up. This limits its usefulness on trips - I use Windows when traveling because I don't want to wait for the laptop to boot up every time.
The laptop is over 4 years old and came out when ACPI was rather new so I assume it's some quirk in the hardware that's causing the problem. I've tried unloading every hardware driver I can (Atheros wifi, shutting down X windows, etc) before suspending, but it still locks up. Other than that it works almost perfectly, so I hate to replace it just based on that issue.
How do I go about getting that problem resolved?
I would like to know what they intend to do with this information. Sue the people who watched these 'illegal' videos? I could see giving them info on the people that posted the videos, but info on the viewers just feels like a fishing expedition.
I'll third this. I have a decent Dell monitor at work, and I had an old 17" Viewsonic CRT at home that was annoying because it was slightly unfocused in the middle of the screen. Having a decent display at work only made it worse because I knew how good the picture could be.
I was happy with the Dell at work, so based on that and the recommendations of a couple friends, I bought a Dell Ultrasharp 22" widescreen earlier this year, and I've been much happier with my home PC since.
My only gripe is that both Dell LCDs I use have one dead pixel each.
Of course you still need cell phone service for Onstar to work. (And digital service now...cars with the older analog Onstar phones are now unable to use the service.) I wonder about the rural areas you mention actually having digital cell phone service.
I'm not disagreeing with you, just pointing out that in some of those areas, Onstar might not do any good anyway.
SWEET! Now that would be cool.
I've been using pairnic.com for all of mine. No jerking around, multiple warnings in advance of expiration, and I think I paid $50 for 5 years last time I renewed.
I dunno. I just cleaned my gutters today, and it took me perhaps 30 minutes. Of course, I have a single-level house so that's probably helping (a 6' ladder is all I need), and it's not a huge house.
I would like to have something better though. My neighbor has gutters that have a ledge over the top of them so water can get in but little or nothing else. And they have a lifetime warranty: if they ever get clogged the company will come out and clean them for free. He's had them for quite a few years and hasn't had a problem.
But this robot doesn't really seem like a good solution to me. It's not that hard to reach in and grab the leaves/pine needles and toss them in a bag. I imagine $100 could buy something to protect at least one of my gutters from getting leaves/needles in there in the first place (or at least reduce the amount).
It really doesn't matter whether he's being an asshat or not - you could be doing 70 mph in the right lane in a 55 mph zone with three completely empty lanes to your left, and someone would still be tailgating you. At least that's how it is here in DC.
That's a little bit different I would imagine - you agreed to those terms when you joined Columbia House.
The theory is this: letting people and goods move around easily is good for economies. So the money spent on the infrastructure comes back in the form of tax revenue.
D'oh. Try that again... Been posting on forums frequently today, trying to get a car problem resolved.
[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_Corridor#Grade_crossings]According to Wikipedia[/url] they've all been eliminated except in Connecticut.
The one you have there looks to me like the road goes under the track.
Won't happen. It'd be nice but it won't happen.
I read Trains magazine religiously each month. This month there was an article about a train (Amtrak) that Missouri pays for to run between St. Louis and Kansas City (IIRC). Ridership on the train was very good, but unfortunately the track it uses has a lot of freight trains as well, so the Amtrak trains are frequently late, and ridership is declining. Missouri did a study and found that it'd cost $45 million to improve the line, and they allocated $10 million to double track a few sections.
Meanwhile, as the article points out, if Missouri instead decided to build a 6-lane highway, the federal gov't would kick in 80% of the funding.
Sanity. It just won't happen.
Actually Vegas already has a monorail. :)
I used to get religious chain letters. Those were annoying because they usually contained all kinds of tripe about how the phrase "under God" in the US Pledge of Allegiance was a good thing or similar idiotic issues. The most annoying part of them was that they usually ended with something like, "If you don't agree, just delete this," which basically says that it's okay for them to share their opinion with me, but they don't want to hear mine back.
I, of course, would gladly send my opinion back to the person that sent it to me. She no longer sends them to me.
Can you please define "very accurate"? I think we can now reliably get 3 meter accuracy if WAAS is available, right? Apparently these new satellites should be better than that, if the Wikipedia article I read on them is any indication, but I haven't heard a number saying how much better.
That's pretty amazing to me that the DNC didn't work for you - the telemarketing calls I got dropped to about zero (politicians and non-profits still call me, along with companies that I currently deal with). I think since they instituted the DNC I've gotten exactly one illegal telemarketing call, which I reported.
When I moved to my new house I forgot to register the new phone number, and I got several calls in the first few weeks. I registered right after the first one and after a two or three weeks they stopped (again, except for the three excluded groups).
The biggest problem I'm having is that there are apparently dozens of creditors calling for the previous residents of my house (I get their mail too, even after two years of living there), who did NOT have the same phone number I do. They were renters, not owners, so I know absolutely nothing about them. I get calls for them every two weeks or so. I want a "Do Not Call New Residents And Ask Them Where The Previous Residents Are" List.
Is this the new form of the classic "prison rape isn't a laughing matter!!!!!" post? I'm just curious.
Never mind that, did you see the size of that maintenance vessel??
The laptops in question were Dells. I assume it was default since both laptops were doing it and neither person is very tech-savvy. One didn't even understand the concept of a USB thumb drive, for example, so I'm having trouble believing they both set their laptops up to automatically connect to peer-to-peer networks.
(Do people actually use the peer-to-peer mode anyway? In over four years of playing with Wifi, this weekend was the first time I saw a peer-to-peer network, and it wasn't even set up intentionally.)
From playing with a friend's WinXP laptop over the weekend, I can see how it happens: Windows will automatically connect to any network it can find, even peer-to-peer. I'm sure this behavior can be disabled, but it's probably set up that way by default by the manufacturers to make it easier for users. I realize this is old news to most people, but I don't use WinXP very often and was a bit surprised to see it connect to a peer-to-peer network.
(My laptop has WinXP on it, but it's an older laptop - 4 years - and it uses Atheros software to connect and only attempts to connect to the network I activate. Under Linux, my usual OS, I set up a script for it to connect to the SSID I specify.)
Plus, people do use others access points intentionally - some friends of mine were doing it over the weekend when we were camping at a spot that didn't have any internet access.