I was hoping someone would say something like this. I do the exact same thing with my "media" drive - a two terabyte drive with our pictures, home videos, mp3s, etc. on it. I have another external 2 GB drive. It really doesn't take that long for the rsync to work - I start it and it finishes a couple minutes later, even when I haven't done it for 30 or 60 days. I've never sat there and timed it, because I usually start it and go do something else, but I don't think it takes 15 minutes on average - maybe 5 or 10. It sounds like something else is wrong in his setup. I'm curious, though, so I'll add date/time start/end time stamps to the script I use (which just calls rsync with the correct options so I don't accidentally make a second copy of the media drive under the original backup copy, or something like that) so I can monitor it.
I'm hoping their recent acquisition of Waze will make them stronger in this case. I have Waze and plan to use it on a long road trip tomorrow where I'm not as worried about traffic, but for traffic purposes around DC, it's just not as good as Google Maps as far as I can tell (it seems to need a bunch of people using it in an area, and it just doesn't have that installed base yet). Combining the best of the two should produce a pretty useful map, I think - as long as the Waze-style constant tracking is opt-in. Waze has speed camera information and all, crowdsourced I assume, but it's there and useful. It was counting down to where the cameras are in my town, for example, and had them exactly where they normally are located.
You do realize you can opt out of class action lawsuits and pursue your own legal action, right? When you join the class, you are agreeing to the lawyers' negotiated settlement.
The insurance costs will be higher just because if anything happens the insurance company has to buy you a new car.
Not always. We replaced my wife's '01 Saturn L300 sedan (worth ~$1700 on trade in) with a '12 Honda Accord V6 (maxed out as the GP said at around $30K)...and our insurance premium actually dropped ~$100/year. Turns out the new safety features make the car cheaper to insure. That wasn't something we expected when we bought it - I thought it'd be the same or a bit more.
One will find circuit breakers that were poorly designed (Stab-Lok models, for instance), outlets that were never properly grounded or that are near sinks and bathtubs and lacking GFI, and wiring run sideways through the walls or that has no slack or is too close to something else such as a fireplace's chimney.
Our house has Stab-Lok breakers (still). I live in fear that one of these days one of those breakers is going to fail, and of course then I'll be in for an entire panel replacement (although I guess that's better than the other possibility of a fire). When that happens I'll want to upgrade from the current 100 amp service to something a little more modern, adding to the expense. And at some point it'd be nice to have the seven 110 volt circuits we currently have (2 of which are dedicated to furnace fan and fridge, so really 5 circuits for all lighting, outlets, microwave, dishwasher, washer, etc.) split into more circuits...
I've also found that the original wiring in the attic is stretched taut. I think you could play music on them. I assume they were saving money. Any revision to the wiring requires two junction boxes with an extra piece of wire between them, or something similar. Ideally you'd just replace the wire, but of course it's nailed to the studs inside the wall and you'd never be able to get it back into the boxes, so you're kind of screwed.
In return for opening the dealership with a brand, you are the exclusive dealer and service center for that brand within a certain distance. If you have a Ford dealer, I can't open another Ford dealer next door. You're relying on Ford to enforce that provision, but they know what would happen if they screwed over their dealers - lawsuits, and suddenly no one to sell your cars any more.
Wait, do you actually believe that the cost of adding smart chips to all credit cards, modifying all ATMs to use the smart chips, etc would be LESS than $45M? What are you smoking? There are almost 620 MILLION credit cards in the US. There are 2.2 MILLION ATMs in the US. Please tell us how you plan to upgrade all of that for less than $45M.
The problem is not underestimation of risk, it is underestimation of cost by the second-guessers.
It's interesting to me that I've had one of the chipped cards for several years now - at least 4 or 5 years. I assumed when I received it that our other cards would be moving that way, too, but every card we have has been replaced since then - some several times - and none of them have the chip, or if they do they don't mention it. I suspect we'll be seeing more chipped cards after this, though. You're right, it's expensive, but not every bank has billions of dollars to lose, either - for example, credit unions are often much smaller.
OTOH, I saw a classic imprint machine in use less than two years ago. With tech like that still around, who knows how long a full switchover would take?
Anyone else remember the books of valid card numbers cashiers used to have?
I've found I'm just as fast and accurate on my BB Bold's physical keyboard as I am with the iPhone and Android keyboards (I use all three regularly - BB is for work, the iPhone is my retired 3GS that I still use for a couple things, the Android is my current phone). But, the physical keyboard on my BB takes up space that could be used for displaying things when I'm not typing, so I much prefer even my 3GS over my current BB. Word on the street is that work is switching from BBs to iPhones this year. I'm hoping it's sooner rather than later, because I don't like the BB at all. (Actually, what I really want is a solution for my Android phone so I don't need two phones at all. But security may prevent that.)
A separate gripe about the BB: It's picky about its charger. We have a lot of USB chargers we have around the house, since we both have tablets (Android and iOS), there are three or four iPod models floating around, we both have the iPhone 3GS, and my wife has an iPhone 5 while I have an Android phone, plus chargers in the cars, etc. We probably have 20 or 30 chargers, easily, from many different manufacturers - Apple, Samsung, Asus, and other brands. I tried every single charger we have, and I could only find two that will charge the BB - one is the BB-branded charger that came with it that I keep at work, and the other is the Samsung charger that came with my S3 (however, the S3 charges on every standard USB adapter I've tried). It won't even charge off my laptop. Sure, it's a standard connector on the BB phone, but it won't work with an off-the-shelf charger. Jerks.
Yes, it's a major inconvenience in modern society, but 20 years ago nobody would have cared because nobody had a cell phone. The amount of people dying because 911 couldn't be called hasn't significantly changed since, or the research indicating just that would be all over the news all the time and nobody in the their right mind would think of blocking cell phone reception.
Except, 20 years ago, there probably would've been payphones in the lobby right outside the theater. Where's the nearest phone now? Snack bar? Manager's office? Where is the manager's office? Not that I in general disagree with you, but I'm just pointing out a flaw in the argument you're making.
If your rail network didn't suck so much one of the companies could run an advertising campaign along the lines of "Don't like getting your balls checked for explosives or your children sexually assaulted in public? Take the train!"
Amtrak does run ads like that here (in the DC area) for the Northeast Corridor service (DC - Baltimore - Philadelphia - New York - Boston). Phrased a little more politely, of course, but they do reference the airline security. Another one parodies the traffic on the interstate (I-95) in the same corridor.
I've been using it for a few months, using CloudGates.net to transfer data to it (the SimpleAmazonGlacierUploader java applet had a bug in it that affects larger files - not sure if it's been fixed yet). It's pretty great - I have 136 gigabytes of data at the moment, so I get a bill for $1.36 each month. For the money, the hassle of building a server to put at a friend's place isn't worth it, and I couldn't find any other backup solutions that are as cheap. Yes, directory listings and downloads take a few hours, but... if my house burns down and I'm recovering this data, I'm not going to mind a few hours' wait.
Interesting, where I live and work it's more or less the opposite. I take it the transit outfit where you live doesn't use grade separation for mass transit.
I'm not the GP poster, but I can guess at this one: It's not so much as a lack of grade separations (which they are around DC), as it is that the train doesn't take a direct route to where we go. For example, DC's metro is a "spoke" system, and I live at one end of the spoke but work at another end, so I'd have to hop aboard the train and ride for probably 45 minutes, changing trains in the center of DC. (I should also note that this is after getting to the station - I could either take a bus for that, or drive to the station - but if I drive to the station, I'm a third of the way to work already). Meanwhile I can be at work from home by car in 30 minutes.
My wife and I work at the same place, so we do carpool, which that saves a bunch of money, in addition to the obvious gas savings - it means we really only need to keep one super reliable car, and the other car can be my old-but-still-fun car that's good for driving to work occasionally, but not something that would stand up to daily commuting.
I have an iPod touch, gen 2, which has been stranded. I wish I could get an update on it. but the CPU on it is too old, so they don't support CPU hog IOS5 on it.
I hear people complaining about this, and I don't get it. Maybe they don't remember the 80s and 90s when your computer was out of date within a few months, and it wasn't long before you couldn't run the newest and greatest software. Today, computers have a much longer lifetime than they did back then. I point this out because that's where we are with these portable computers (iPhones, Android phones, tablets, etc.) - we're still in that early and fast update phase. Early on, each new iteration was leaps and bounds ahead of the prior one, and the pace is only starting to slow down now. The pace will speed up again if and when better battery technology shows up.
And, frankly, they pushed out updates for the Touch 2nd Gen for quite some time. Don't act like it was abandoned 3 weeks after they released it, because it wasn't. Updates were available for a long time for it.
Are you referring to the seller stores that they've had for years? I don't get how they're really any different than the rest of ebay, aside from the buy-it-now versus auction format. If that is what you're referring to, they have the same problem - we don't trust ebay for the issues ArsenneLupin mentioned.
Why would someone buy something off ebay that isn't an item that's no longer made or some cheap import (I bought some LEDs once that would fall into that category)? I'd never consider buying, say, a new camera from ebay; it's just not worth the risk, and even if the transaction goes smoothly, who knows whether the manufacturer will honor the warranty if something does go wrong later. Also, ebay all but forces you to use PayPal (for buying and selling) to annoy you even further - feeling like you're basically screwed if something goes wrong, because PayPal will probably do whatever is best for ebay - they are in no way a neutral party to the transaction. Meanwhile, they're laughing all the way to the bank - they get listing fees plus PayPal fees. What a racket.
When I hand over cash (excuse me, use Paypal...) for something on ebay, I feel like I'm kissing my money goodbye and hoping the seller is legitimate because the recourse options are not pretty, and the way the feedback was set up, it was basically controlled by the seller (they may have changed this - I haven't paid close attention), so you could read them to get a warm fuzzy feeling but intellectually you knew they could mean absolutely nothing. They really need to work on their reputation if they want me to think of them as a reliable, honest vendor of general merchandise capable of competing with Amazon.
I've bought a couple dozen things from ebay sellers over the years, mostly under $100, and although I've never had a problem, between them and PayPal I always worry things are going to go awry, and I'll be stuck fighting with PayPal and ebay over a ridiculous $40 transaction. And ebay/PayPal are probably happy with me feeling that way, because for merely $40 I'm probably not going to spend a bunch of time fighting it, and they'll come out winners.
Meanwhile, if I buy something from Amazon or one of their partners or NewEgg or pretty much anyone else, and they try to screw me somehow, I at least have an independent third party involved - the credit card company, who has to follow the consumer protection laws. The ebay/Paypal thing removes that layer of protection. No, ebay would definitely not be my second thought if I saw Amazon was down.
You've never redesigned a website or anything, ever, even though it performs the same functions in the end? Sure, it's electrons instead of physical objects, but there's still a cost to it - the time to do the work, test it, and deploy it. Is that consumerism, too?
Besides, and only on/. would I be arguing this, but: 1. Perhaps the lamp had a faulty switch or something. Sure, it could be repaired, but if you already aren't happy with the style or the way it throws light, this could be the trigger to get a new lamp entirely. And, 2., where I live, the places who want donations come and pick them up from our porch. How do you know that wasn't the case with the lamp in the commercial?
I have a 3400 sqft house with a single Asus router running the whole deal.
I also went through 2 WRT54G's in as many years. I find both stories believeable, but of the people I know, no one is actually still using their WRT54G for anything other than one guy is using it for a small wired subnet. The wireless generally loses range on them as they get older for some inexplicable reason.
You can count me as someone using one for his regular home network. The laptop I'm typing this on is connected to the net through it! It's an old v1.1 model that I've never had a single issue with. I bought it in 2001 or 2002, I think.
I intend to upgrade to an N router with gigabit ethernet soon. We have several N devices now, and I often transfer large raw picture files over the network, so a faster network would be nice, plus the some of the computers with ethernet ports have gigabit now, so I might as well take advantage of that.
We went to see Monster's, Inc. 3D a couple weeks ago. About 3/4s of the way through the movie, a bunch of teenagers came in, talking loudly, and sat in the row we were in. I gave them several looks, and they didn't seem to get the hint, but fortunately they did leave after about 10 minutes. The good news was that it was a movie we'd both seen before (we went for the 3D, and just to see it in the theater again - and, again, I thought the animation of Sully's fur is simply amazing, especially in the sled scene - the same reaction I had when I saw it the first time).
But it's pretty rare that we have a problem. We don't go to see many movies, perhaps two a year, but it's pretty unusual to have something like that happen. I think once during Argo I saw someone with their phone on, but there could've been more - I enjoyed the film so much I may have missed other incidents of it.
Yeah, you're rights are more important than anyone else's. How DARE someone want to be reachable in an emergency and still have a life?
If this were the case - that is, people ONLY did this during real emergencies, and they simply stepped out of the theater - we wouldn't be talking about it. It'd be so rare that we'd think, "Wow, that guy must have something serious going on," and we'd give him/her a pass, similar to how we let ambulances go around us on the roads.
But we all know that's not the case. The people who are doing it because they can't stand to be away from their phone for an hour or two are ruining it for the very few people with real emergencies.
Also Slashdot's mobile beta thoroughly sucks. This was supposed to be a reply to the GP. I have no idea how it landed here. Hopefully this lands as a reply to my original mislocated message!
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The show seemed like an interesting concept to me, but then I remembered that I saw the movie.
I was hoping someone would say something like this. I do the exact same thing with my "media" drive - a two terabyte drive with our pictures, home videos, mp3s, etc. on it. I have another external 2 GB drive. It really doesn't take that long for the rsync to work - I start it and it finishes a couple minutes later, even when I haven't done it for 30 or 60 days. I've never sat there and timed it, because I usually start it and go do something else, but I don't think it takes 15 minutes on average - maybe 5 or 10. It sounds like something else is wrong in his setup. I'm curious, though, so I'll add date/time start/end time stamps to the script I use (which just calls rsync with the correct options so I don't accidentally make a second copy of the media drive under the original backup copy, or something like that) so I can monitor it.
I'm hoping their recent acquisition of Waze will make them stronger in this case. I have Waze and plan to use it on a long road trip tomorrow where I'm not as worried about traffic, but for traffic purposes around DC, it's just not as good as Google Maps as far as I can tell (it seems to need a bunch of people using it in an area, and it just doesn't have that installed base yet). Combining the best of the two should produce a pretty useful map, I think - as long as the Waze-style constant tracking is opt-in. Waze has speed camera information and all, crowdsourced I assume, but it's there and useful. It was counting down to where the cameras are in my town, for example, and had them exactly where they normally are located.
My solution: If I screw up, I have the guts to admit it.
You do realize you can opt out of class action lawsuits and pursue your own legal action, right? When you join the class, you are agreeing to the lawyers' negotiated settlement.
The insurance costs will be higher just because if anything happens the insurance company has to buy you a new car.
Not always. We replaced my wife's '01 Saturn L300 sedan (worth ~$1700 on trade in) with a '12 Honda Accord V6 (maxed out as the GP said at around $30K)...and our insurance premium actually dropped ~$100/year. Turns out the new safety features make the car cheaper to insure. That wasn't something we expected when we bought it - I thought it'd be the same or a bit more.
One will find circuit breakers that were poorly designed (Stab-Lok models, for instance), outlets that were never properly grounded or that are near sinks and bathtubs and lacking GFI, and wiring run sideways through the walls or that has no slack or is too close to something else such as a fireplace's chimney.
Our house has Stab-Lok breakers (still). I live in fear that one of these days one of those breakers is going to fail, and of course then I'll be in for an entire panel replacement (although I guess that's better than the other possibility of a fire). When that happens I'll want to upgrade from the current 100 amp service to something a little more modern, adding to the expense. And at some point it'd be nice to have the seven 110 volt circuits we currently have (2 of which are dedicated to furnace fan and fridge, so really 5 circuits for all lighting, outlets, microwave, dishwasher, washer, etc.) split into more circuits...
I've also found that the original wiring in the attic is stretched taut. I think you could play music on them. I assume they were saving money. Any revision to the wiring requires two junction boxes with an extra piece of wire between them, or something similar. Ideally you'd just replace the wire, but of course it's nailed to the studs inside the wall and you'd never be able to get it back into the boxes, so you're kind of screwed.
In return for opening the dealership with a brand, you are the exclusive dealer and service center for that brand within a certain distance. If you have a Ford dealer, I can't open another Ford dealer next door. You're relying on Ford to enforce that provision, but they know what would happen if they screwed over their dealers - lawsuits, and suddenly no one to sell your cars any more.
Wait, do you actually believe that the cost of adding smart chips to all credit cards, modifying all ATMs to use the smart chips, etc would be LESS than $45M? What are you smoking? There are almost 620 MILLION credit cards in the US. There are 2.2 MILLION ATMs in the US. Please tell us how you plan to upgrade all of that for less than $45M.
The problem is not underestimation of risk, it is underestimation of cost by the second-guessers.
It's interesting to me that I've had one of the chipped cards for several years now - at least 4 or 5 years. I assumed when I received it that our other cards would be moving that way, too, but every card we have has been replaced since then - some several times - and none of them have the chip, or if they do they don't mention it. I suspect we'll be seeing more chipped cards after this, though. You're right, it's expensive, but not every bank has billions of dollars to lose, either - for example, credit unions are often much smaller.
OTOH, I saw a classic imprint machine in use less than two years ago. With tech like that still around, who knows how long a full switchover would take?
Anyone else remember the books of valid card numbers cashiers used to have?
I've found I'm just as fast and accurate on my BB Bold's physical keyboard as I am with the iPhone and Android keyboards (I use all three regularly - BB is for work, the iPhone is my retired 3GS that I still use for a couple things, the Android is my current phone). But, the physical keyboard on my BB takes up space that could be used for displaying things when I'm not typing, so I much prefer even my 3GS over my current BB. Word on the street is that work is switching from BBs to iPhones this year. I'm hoping it's sooner rather than later, because I don't like the BB at all. (Actually, what I really want is a solution for my Android phone so I don't need two phones at all. But security may prevent that.)
A separate gripe about the BB: It's picky about its charger. We have a lot of USB chargers we have around the house, since we both have tablets (Android and iOS), there are three or four iPod models floating around, we both have the iPhone 3GS, and my wife has an iPhone 5 while I have an Android phone, plus chargers in the cars, etc. We probably have 20 or 30 chargers, easily, from many different manufacturers - Apple, Samsung, Asus, and other brands. I tried every single charger we have, and I could only find two that will charge the BB - one is the BB-branded charger that came with it that I keep at work, and the other is the Samsung charger that came with my S3 (however, the S3 charges on every standard USB adapter I've tried). It won't even charge off my laptop. Sure, it's a standard connector on the BB phone, but it won't work with an off-the-shelf charger. Jerks.
Yes, it's a major inconvenience in modern society, but 20 years ago nobody would have cared because nobody had a cell phone. The amount of people dying because 911 couldn't be called hasn't significantly changed since, or the research indicating just that would be all over the news all the time and nobody in the their right mind would think of blocking cell phone reception.
Except, 20 years ago, there probably would've been payphones in the lobby right outside the theater. Where's the nearest phone now? Snack bar? Manager's office? Where is the manager's office? Not that I in general disagree with you, but I'm just pointing out a flaw in the argument you're making.
If your rail network didn't suck so much one of the companies could run an advertising campaign along the lines of "Don't like getting your balls checked for explosives or your children sexually assaulted in public? Take the train!"
Amtrak does run ads like that here (in the DC area) for the Northeast Corridor service (DC - Baltimore - Philadelphia - New York - Boston). Phrased a little more politely, of course, but they do reference the airline security. Another one parodies the traffic on the interstate (I-95) in the same corridor.
I've been using it for a few months, using CloudGates.net to transfer data to it (the SimpleAmazonGlacierUploader java applet had a bug in it that affects larger files - not sure if it's been fixed yet). It's pretty great - I have 136 gigabytes of data at the moment, so I get a bill for $1.36 each month. For the money, the hassle of building a server to put at a friend's place isn't worth it, and I couldn't find any other backup solutions that are as cheap. Yes, directory listings and downloads take a few hours, but... if my house burns down and I'm recovering this data, I'm not going to mind a few hours' wait.
Interesting, where I live and work it's more or less the opposite. I take it the transit outfit where you live doesn't use grade separation for mass transit.
I'm not the GP poster, but I can guess at this one: It's not so much as a lack of grade separations (which they are around DC), as it is that the train doesn't take a direct route to where we go. For example, DC's metro is a "spoke" system, and I live at one end of the spoke but work at another end, so I'd have to hop aboard the train and ride for probably 45 minutes, changing trains in the center of DC. (I should also note that this is after getting to the station - I could either take a bus for that, or drive to the station - but if I drive to the station, I'm a third of the way to work already). Meanwhile I can be at work from home by car in 30 minutes.
My wife and I work at the same place, so we do carpool, which that saves a bunch of money, in addition to the obvious gas savings - it means we really only need to keep one super reliable car, and the other car can be my old-but-still-fun car that's good for driving to work occasionally, but not something that would stand up to daily commuting.
Next up: lawsuits over low grades. We can only hope this is thrown out.
I have an iPod touch, gen 2, which has been stranded. I wish I could get an update on it. but the CPU on it is too old, so they don't support CPU hog IOS5 on it.
I hear people complaining about this, and I don't get it. Maybe they don't remember the 80s and 90s when your computer was out of date within a few months, and it wasn't long before you couldn't run the newest and greatest software. Today, computers have a much longer lifetime than they did back then. I point this out because that's where we are with these portable computers (iPhones, Android phones, tablets, etc.) - we're still in that early and fast update phase. Early on, each new iteration was leaps and bounds ahead of the prior one, and the pace is only starting to slow down now. The pace will speed up again if and when better battery technology shows up.
And, frankly, they pushed out updates for the Touch 2nd Gen for quite some time. Don't act like it was abandoned 3 weeks after they released it, because it wasn't. Updates were available for a long time for it.
...and yet, Apple updates their devices frequently.
Are you referring to the seller stores that they've had for years? I don't get how they're really any different than the rest of ebay, aside from the buy-it-now versus auction format. If that is what you're referring to, they have the same problem - we don't trust ebay for the issues ArsenneLupin mentioned.
Why would someone buy something off ebay that isn't an item that's no longer made or some cheap import (I bought some LEDs once that would fall into that category)? I'd never consider buying, say, a new camera from ebay; it's just not worth the risk, and even if the transaction goes smoothly, who knows whether the manufacturer will honor the warranty if something does go wrong later. Also, ebay all but forces you to use PayPal (for buying and selling) to annoy you even further - feeling like you're basically screwed if something goes wrong, because PayPal will probably do whatever is best for ebay - they are in no way a neutral party to the transaction. Meanwhile, they're laughing all the way to the bank - they get listing fees plus PayPal fees. What a racket.
When I hand over cash (excuse me, use Paypal...) for something on ebay, I feel like I'm kissing my money goodbye and hoping the seller is legitimate because the recourse options are not pretty, and the way the feedback was set up, it was basically controlled by the seller (they may have changed this - I haven't paid close attention), so you could read them to get a warm fuzzy feeling but intellectually you knew they could mean absolutely nothing. They really need to work on their reputation if they want me to think of them as a reliable, honest vendor of general merchandise capable of competing with Amazon.
I've bought a couple dozen things from ebay sellers over the years, mostly under $100, and although I've never had a problem, between them and PayPal I always worry things are going to go awry, and I'll be stuck fighting with PayPal and ebay over a ridiculous $40 transaction. And ebay/PayPal are probably happy with me feeling that way, because for merely $40 I'm probably not going to spend a bunch of time fighting it, and they'll come out winners.
Meanwhile, if I buy something from Amazon or one of their partners or NewEgg or pretty much anyone else, and they try to screw me somehow, I at least have an independent third party involved - the credit card company, who has to follow the consumer protection laws. The ebay/Paypal thing removes that layer of protection. No, ebay would definitely not be my second thought if I saw Amazon was down.
You've never redesigned a website or anything, ever, even though it performs the same functions in the end? Sure, it's electrons instead of physical objects, but there's still a cost to it - the time to do the work, test it, and deploy it. Is that consumerism, too?
Besides, and only on /. would I be arguing this, but: 1. Perhaps the lamp had a faulty switch or something. Sure, it could be repaired, but if you already aren't happy with the style or the way it throws light, this could be the trigger to get a new lamp entirely. And, 2., where I live, the places who want donations come and pick them up from our porch. How do you know that wasn't the case with the lamp in the commercial?
Maybe this will help, courtesy of Ikea.
I have a 3400 sqft house with a single Asus router running the whole deal.
I also went through 2 WRT54G's in as many years. I find both stories believeable, but of the people I know, no one is actually still using their WRT54G for anything other than one guy is using it for a small wired subnet. The wireless generally loses range on them as they get older for some inexplicable reason.
You can count me as someone using one for his regular home network. The laptop I'm typing this on is connected to the net through it! It's an old v1.1 model that I've never had a single issue with. I bought it in 2001 or 2002, I think.
I intend to upgrade to an N router with gigabit ethernet soon. We have several N devices now, and I often transfer large raw picture files over the network, so a faster network would be nice, plus the some of the computers with ethernet ports have gigabit now, so I might as well take advantage of that.
We went to see Monster's, Inc. 3D a couple weeks ago. About 3/4s of the way through the movie, a bunch of teenagers came in, talking loudly, and sat in the row we were in. I gave them several looks, and they didn't seem to get the hint, but fortunately they did leave after about 10 minutes. The good news was that it was a movie we'd both seen before (we went for the 3D, and just to see it in the theater again - and, again, I thought the animation of Sully's fur is simply amazing, especially in the sled scene - the same reaction I had when I saw it the first time).
But it's pretty rare that we have a problem. We don't go to see many movies, perhaps two a year, but it's pretty unusual to have something like that happen. I think once during Argo I saw someone with their phone on, but there could've been more - I enjoyed the film so much I may have missed other incidents of it.
Yeah, you're rights are more important than anyone else's. How DARE someone want to be reachable in an emergency and still have a life?
If this were the case - that is, people ONLY did this during real emergencies, and they simply stepped out of the theater - we wouldn't be talking about it. It'd be so rare that we'd think, "Wow, that guy must have something serious going on," and we'd give him/her a pass, similar to how we let ambulances go around us on the roads.
But we all know that's not the case. The people who are doing it because they can't stand to be away from their phone for an hour or two are ruining it for the very few people with real emergencies.
Also Slashdot's mobile beta thoroughly sucks. This was supposed to be a reply to the GP. I have no idea how it landed here. Hopefully this lands as a reply to my original mislocated message!
I used Dvorak for 6 or 8 years. I may have been slightly faster with it, but it wasn't worth the hassles. I gave up on it a decade or so ago.