Re:How Good is "Good Enough?"
on
Beyond HDTV
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· Score: 1
At some point, displays have a high enough resolution that the human eye can't tell when the picture is any sharper. We've got to be getting close to that, no?
We already have in many cases. Got a 40" TV? No point going beyond 1080p unless you sit less than 5 feet away. 60" TV? You better sit less than 8 feet away if you want any more than 1080p. I'd suspect more than 90% of people sit further away than those distances, and thus they aren't even seeing the full benefit of current 1080p TVs.
What I want to know is, how is it that google+ keeps growing? I thought they stopped accepting new users. I don't have an invite yet, but I haven't really tried to get one, because every time I've gone to the website in the last few weeks, it always says "Already invited? We've temporarily exceeded our capacity. Please try again soon." So if they aren't accepting even invited users, how is it that they continue to grow? Is there some secret way to get in now?
The point is, you shouldn't have to avoid air travel!
No, I think the point was that you can't travel without taking a plane, and I was demonstrating that point is false. If you want to have some other conversation and make some other point, that's fine, but that's not what was going on here.
Damn it people, grow a pair and stand up!
Sorry, but this shit pisses me off.
Wait, so how exactly am I supposed to do that? What do I have to do to "grow a pair"? I thought the fact that I'm not giving into their searches IS standing up. What am I really supposed to do...take the plane, bitch about it endlessly, but in the end consent to the search (because that's the only way you're getting through)? Or am I supposed to plan my vacations by plane, show up at the airport, refuse all their screening, and then not get let on the plane, ruining our family vacation? Or am I supposed to get arrested, or show up with guns blazing or something?
Right, try travelling around the US without using a plane.
I do it all the time. Since 2006, I've been to Maine, Tennessee, Wyoming, and a whole host of other places, yet the last time I was on a plane was 2005.
Up here in Canada, the last time I bought a 4 pack of CFLs, it cost $10, and that was on sale of 50% off
Ouch. Sorry they're bending you over up there. I just checked the Home Depot website here in the US, and the bulbs I buy have dropped in price, and are actually CHEAPER than I originally posted. They're now 3.97 for a 4 pack.
Apparently you haven't a clue, because I'm not lying. Home Depot sells a brand called ecosmart. These things last well (like I said, in my entire house I replace 1-2 per year). They are instant on (as opposed to some other brands like GE where there is a very noticable delay when turning it on). They warm up to full brightness very quickly (the 100 watt bulbs seem to be a bit slower to warm up than the 60 watt bulbs, but still pretty quick). And best of all, the sell them in 3 color models: soft light - green packaging, and the output looks just like a regular incandescent if that's your thing bright light - red packaging, these ones are the brightest of the 3 and have the light that's sort of a magenta cast like what people typically associate with a CFL daylight - blue package, these have a bit more of a bluish tint and are almost as bright as the bright light models. This light is the most natural IMHO, and is what I like the best.
One with balanced lighting equivalent to incandescent
LOL....you consider an incandescent to be "balanced"? Take a look at the light outside...THAT is balanced. Not the yellow crap that comes off an incandescence. If you prefer the incandescent color, that's cool (lots of people prefer it), but PLEASE don't call it balanced.
Here, YOU DO DA math!
Um....perhaps you didn't bother to read my post carfully, because it was already filled with "DA math"
given the massive increase in cost, and the claims for bulb life... even one or two failures basically means you've wiped out any savings for the next decade or so.
Complete and utter BS. A CFL runs less than $1.50 each in 4 packs at Home Depot. A regular incandescent is about 10 cents each I suppose. So that's a difference of $1.40, so let's see what it takes to make that up.
If you replace a 100w bulb with a CFL, you save approx 75 watts. That means that bulb consumes 0.075kwh per hour, or 0.00125kwh per minute. At a rate of 12 cents per kwh (pretty typical...not to many places are much lower, but some are quite a bit higher), that means switching to a CFL saves you about 0.015 cents per minute of operation. To make up that $1.40 difference, you need to operate the lightbulb for 9,333 minutes. Spread that across a year and that comes to about 25 minutes per day. So, if your light is on for 25 minutes per day, and you need to replace it once per year, then you break even on the cost.
Your claim that it wipes out your savings for a decade indicates you have a light bulb on for about 2.5 minutes per day and still have to replace them annually (doubtful), or you replace the things every month (in which case you've got some shitty electrical wiring in your house, or you've got these things on a dimmer circuit). My experience has been that I'll replace maybe 1 to 2 bulbs per year through the entire house, and I can say that the combined runtime of all lights in the house is a LOT more than 50 minutes per day.
If you're going to be in the press observation bunker bring a coat. Before the launch they chill that room to something like 55F. Almost immediately after launch the temp jumps into the 90's from the energy released by the rocket.
Are you serious, or did you make that up (or are you passing along a story someone else made up)? As far as I know, the closest you can get is the press viewing area, and even that's 3 miles from the launch pad (the regular visitor viewing area is 7 miles from the launch pad). I know there is a shitload of energy released from those rockets, but for it to be enough to raise the temperature by 30+ degrees 3 miles away seems a bit unbelievable.
Actually, I suspect it was indeed intentional, but at the same time, completely understandable. Think about it. When you start getting this emails from groupon and other discount websites, what does google know about it? They know is the emails just suddenly started appearing in your inbox, and they know that you never bothered to click on the welcome email. That's not very convincing that you are actually interested in the emails.
Now, what does google know about your subscription to google offers? Well, they know it was you who intentionally signed up, because they know you went out of your way and did it WHILE LOGGED INTO YOUR GOOGLE ACCOUNT. Whether or not you clicked on any emails in your gmail account is a complete red herring, because they already had all the information necessary to authenticate the legitimacy of those emails even before the first welcome email arrived in your inbox.
> The point is, they are here now and usable (in at least some circumstances)
Really? Do you have one?
No I don't. I've been waiting for the Silicon Dust device (which as I said previously, will be available at the end of July), but the Ceton has been available and usable under Linux for several months now.
The ugly spectre of DRM raises it's ugly head and makes it very unlikely that a Ceton card is going to be as useful in Linux. This DRM causes problems and imposes limitations even with non-Linux solutions.
Like I said, it depends on your situation. In my case, my cable company (not a monopoly here, BTW...we have competing providers) provides everything that I am interested in "Copy Freely" form, which means there are absolutely no restrictions on the recordings (I can keep them forever, send them to anybody I want, play them back on any system, edit and transcode them, etc). For me, these devices are going to do everything I could want, for only a fraction of what it would cost to use an HD-PVR.
Will it work for what you want? Perhaps not. But it will work perfectly for a ton of people, including me.
The point is, they are here now and usable (in at least some circumstances) under linux. If you are in a situation where you CAN use one of these devices, then it works out to be superior to the HD-PVR. With a CableCard device, you pay under $300 for the device up front, you only have to rent one cablecard for about $2-4/month, and it only consumes about 10 watts or less of electricity. This will get you 3-4 tuners. To get 3 tuners with HD-PVRs, your up front cost is going to be more than $500 (maybe $400 with the Colossus, though that isn't yet supported under linux), you have to rent a cable box for each one (about $8/month per box), each HD-PVR consumes about 8 watts of electricity, and each cable box will consume 20-50 watts of electricity (some even more).
For the cable card solution, your cost is $300 up front plus $24-$48/year for rental, and about $10/year for electricity. Your 3 year cost $402-$474. For the HD-PVR solution, your cost is $500 up front, plus $288/year for rental, and about $20-$50/year for electricity. Your 3 year cost is $1424-$1514
That's a pretty huge advantage for the cablecard. Enough that, even if you've already invested in the HD-PVR solution, switching to cablecard will pay for itself in less than 2 years even if you just throw the HD-PVRs in the garbage.
Again, this only matters if your cable provider sets everything to "Copy Freely" and you don't need any of the premium content (and even if you do, you could just leave 1 HD-PVR around to handle those channels).
Of course, in my previous post, I forgot to add the following: You might be confused, because these don't appear to me to be just regular video capture cards. They appear to only work with security cameras. So the CableCard thing is a little off topic.
Ceton makes a 4-tuner internal CableCard device (already available), and Silicon Dust makes 3-tuner and 6-tuner network attached CableCard devices (available at end of July). Both devices will work under linux. The Ceton will have support in the next version of MythTV, and the Silicon Dust devices are already supported in the current version. The only downside is that they are limited under linux to only recording shows marked "Copy Freely". What this means will vary from cable company to cable company, and even from market to market. Comcast and Wide Open West tend to mark everything as "Copy Freely" in most markets, except for premium channels (HBO, Showtime, etc) and PPV. Other companies like Time Warner seem to mark most every as "Copy Once" or "Copy Never" (though in some cities users have found most everything "Copy Freely").
What's your point? Why would I care if they have compression? So I can watch my movie faster? It's not a general purpose cable. It's got a specific purpose and it fits that purpose perfectly without compression. You can send 8 channel bit-streamed audio + 1080p video (and much higher resolutions, actually) over it without a problem. Error correction? Who cares. I've never seen anybody that had signal problems with it that was caused by the HDMI cabling. And in the absolute rare case that it goes get a glitch, who cares? Oooooh, there will be a 1/4 second of blocking in your video or something. Shit, that happens regularly just in TV broadcasts. Not supporting closed captions? I'm not sure what your point is. It gets rendered into the video by the cable box/PVR. That's how the specification works. That's kind of like bitching that the audio isn't already pre-separated into high/medium/low frequencies.
The Obama White House cuts off access to news agencies that are critical of the Administration
Like which ones? The only one I was aware of was the "news" agency that blatantly makes up it's own "news", and went to court in order to win the right to lie in it's "news"casts.
It happens, but not in that way. Here's an example. Several years ago my mom's car was stolen. A few years later, the cops called to tell her they haven't recovered it, but they know what happened to it. A guy who worked at the dealership was accessing the key code database. This database contains the info necessary to produce a key for a vehicle without actually having access to the key (useful if you lose your only copy of the key). He used this info to manufacture keys for a buddy who actually went out and stole the cars. The only way they figured it out was because the manufacturer had access controls on that data, noticed a larger than usual number of accesses from one dealer, investigated and found that many of those vehicle were reported stolen.
So it does happen. And while the access controls allowed them to detect the breach after the fact, it was too late for my mom. The insurance payment certainly didn't make her whole. And in a home invasion, now you are more likely to have the thief actually confronting somebody, and you increase the chance of someone losing their life.
Perhaps you could lower the total number of branch circuits by going to higher voltage, but I don't know how many people would really care that they have 1/3 fewer breakers.
God, no. It's already bad enough that when I want to cut power to one room, I have to take out 2 other rooms with it. If anything, I want MORE breakers, even if they aren't electrically necessary
I agree. I was hoping to see the result of a 1km wave purely for amusement (or maybe to prepare for a future meteor impact in the ocean). I was severely disappointed. Also, it seems that 1000 meters is some strange cutoff point, as that actually shows less flooding than 999 meters.
When you say: people prefer - how the hell do you know that?
Because it's true. People like freedom. Try using air/rail to travel coast to coast, stopping at 15 landmarks along the way. Try using air/rail to visit relatives that live 2 hours away. Try using air/rail to pack up and move cross country. There's a ton of stuff that people love to do that you can't do nearly as easily (if at all) by air/rail. Yeah, if you are traveling often on business trips, or trying to take a week vacation in LA when you live in NYC, then people definitely love air for that. I'm not saying everyone would rather use roads, and I'm not saying roads are preferred unconditionally. Just that there are tons of people who prefer roads under many circumstances.
Apparently you are wrong, because what the people preferred was rail and air travel for mass transport, otherwise the roads would have existed on the merits of being a profitable investment in the market place, just like rail and air were.
I don't think this is a fair way to look at it. Roads could only be funded without taxes if they were all toll roads, but if you did that, you'd only have the most heavily used routes being funded, and one of the biggest advantages of roads (the flexibility to go pretty much anywhere) would be severely compromised.
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At some point, displays have a high enough resolution that the human eye can't tell when the picture is any sharper. We've got to be getting close to that, no?
We already have in many cases. Got a 40" TV? No point going beyond 1080p unless you sit less than 5 feet away. 60" TV? You better sit less than 8 feet away if you want any more than 1080p. I'd suspect more than 90% of people sit further away than those distances, and thus they aren't even seeing the full benefit of current 1080p TVs.
What I want to know is, how is it that google+ keeps growing? I thought they stopped accepting new users. I don't have an invite yet, but I haven't really tried to get one, because every time I've gone to the website in the last few weeks, it always says "Already invited? We've temporarily exceeded our capacity. Please try again soon." So if they aren't accepting even invited users, how is it that they continue to grow? Is there some secret way to get in now?
1) Wow, I didn't realize that capacity existed yet.
2) I thought it was bad when drives had 3 or 4 different speed ratings, but I guess that was nothing:
Pioneer BDR-206MBK - BDXL drive - Serial ATA - 24x (CD) / 8x (DVD) / 6x (BD) 24x (CD) / 8x (DVD±R) / 8x (DVD±R DL) / 6x (BD-R) / 6x (BD-R DL) / 4x (BD-R QL) / 4x (BD-R TL) 24x (CD) / 6x (DVD-RW) / 8x (DVD+RW) / 2x (BD-RE) / 2x (BD-RE DL) / 2x (BD-RE TL) - Internal
You might want to look up ternary operator: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_operation
Many programming languages that use C-like syntax feature a ternary operator, ?:, which defines a conditional expression
so I first read rge headline as "Rastafarian" rather than "Pastafarian" (and I missed the "in Australia)
Well, Pastafarian isn't the only thing you misread (hint....you are in the wrong hemisphere)
The point is, you shouldn't have to avoid air travel!
No, I think the point was that you can't travel without taking a plane, and I was demonstrating that point is false. If you want to have some other conversation and make some other point, that's fine, but that's not what was going on here.
Damn it people, grow a pair and stand up!
Sorry, but this shit pisses me off.
Wait, so how exactly am I supposed to do that? What do I have to do to "grow a pair"? I thought the fact that I'm not giving into their searches IS standing up. What am I really supposed to do...take the plane, bitch about it endlessly, but in the end consent to the search (because that's the only way you're getting through)? Or am I supposed to plan my vacations by plane, show up at the airport, refuse all their screening, and then not get let on the plane, ruining our family vacation? Or am I supposed to get arrested, or show up with guns blazing or something?
Right, try travelling around the US without using a plane.
I do it all the time. Since 2006, I've been to Maine, Tennessee, Wyoming, and a whole host of other places, yet the last time I was on a plane was 2005.
IMHO ... Redbox has the physical media right.
Really? An EXTREMELY limited selection (only a fraction of what even the crappiest video store would have) is the right approach?
Up here in Canada, the last time I bought a 4 pack of CFLs, it cost $10, and that was on sale of 50% off
Ouch. Sorry they're bending you over up there. I just checked the Home Depot website here in the US, and the bulbs I buy have dropped in price, and are actually CHEAPER than I originally posted. They're now 3.97 for a 4 pack.
Liar. A CRAP cfl costs as little as $1.50.
Apparently you haven't a clue, because I'm not lying. Home Depot sells a brand called ecosmart. These things last well (like I said, in my entire house I replace 1-2 per year). They are instant on (as opposed to some other brands like GE where there is a very noticable delay when turning it on). They warm up to full brightness very quickly (the 100 watt bulbs seem to be a bit slower to warm up than the 60 watt bulbs, but still pretty quick). And best of all, the sell them in 3 color models:
soft light - green packaging, and the output looks just like a regular incandescent if that's your thing
bright light - red packaging, these ones are the brightest of the 3 and have the light that's sort of a magenta cast like what people typically associate with a CFL
daylight - blue package, these have a bit more of a bluish tint and are almost as bright as the bright light models. This light is the most natural IMHO, and is what I like the best.
One with balanced lighting equivalent to incandescent
LOL....you consider an incandescent to be "balanced"? Take a look at the light outside...THAT is balanced. Not the yellow crap that comes off an incandescence. If you prefer the incandescent color, that's cool (lots of people prefer it), but PLEASE don't call it balanced.
Here, YOU DO DA math!
Um....perhaps you didn't bother to read my post carfully, because it was already filled with "DA math"
given the massive increase in cost, and the claims for bulb life ... even one or two failures basically means you've wiped out any savings for the next decade or so.
Complete and utter BS. A CFL runs less than $1.50 each in 4 packs at Home Depot. A regular incandescent is about 10 cents each I suppose. So that's a difference of $1.40, so let's see what it takes to make that up.
If you replace a 100w bulb with a CFL, you save approx 75 watts. That means that bulb consumes 0.075kwh per hour, or 0.00125kwh per minute. At a rate of 12 cents per kwh (pretty typical...not to many places are much lower, but some are quite a bit higher), that means switching to a CFL saves you about 0.015 cents per minute of operation. To make up that $1.40 difference, you need to operate the lightbulb for 9,333 minutes. Spread that across a year and that comes to about 25 minutes per day. So, if your light is on for 25 minutes per day, and you need to replace it once per year, then you break even on the cost.
Your claim that it wipes out your savings for a decade indicates you have a light bulb on for about 2.5 minutes per day and still have to replace them annually (doubtful), or you replace the things every month (in which case you've got some shitty electrical wiring in your house, or you've got these things on a dimmer circuit). My experience has been that I'll replace maybe 1 to 2 bulbs per year through the entire house, and I can say that the combined runtime of all lights in the house is a LOT more than 50 minutes per day.
If you're going to be in the press observation bunker bring a coat. Before the launch they chill that room to something like 55F. Almost immediately after launch the temp jumps into the 90's from the energy released by the rocket.
Are you serious, or did you make that up (or are you passing along a story someone else made up)? As far as I know, the closest you can get is the press viewing area, and even that's 3 miles from the launch pad (the regular visitor viewing area is 7 miles from the launch pad). I know there is a shitload of energy released from those rockets, but for it to be enough to raise the temperature by 30+ degrees 3 miles away seems a bit unbelievable.
Or maybe it is intentional... but I doubt it.
Actually, I suspect it was indeed intentional, but at the same time, completely understandable. Think about it. When you start getting this emails from groupon and other discount websites, what does google know about it? They know is the emails just suddenly started appearing in your inbox, and they know that you never bothered to click on the welcome email. That's not very convincing that you are actually interested in the emails.
Now, what does google know about your subscription to google offers? Well, they know it was you who intentionally signed up, because they know you went out of your way and did it WHILE LOGGED INTO YOUR GOOGLE ACCOUNT. Whether or not you clicked on any emails in your gmail account is a complete red herring, because they already had all the information necessary to authenticate the legitimacy of those emails even before the first welcome email arrived in your inbox.
> The point is, they are here now and usable (in at least some circumstances)
Really? Do you have one?
No I don't. I've been waiting for the Silicon Dust device (which as I said previously, will be available at the end of July), but the Ceton has been available and usable under Linux for several months now.
The ugly spectre of DRM raises it's ugly head and makes it very unlikely that a Ceton card is going to be as useful in Linux. This DRM causes problems and imposes limitations even with non-Linux solutions.
Like I said, it depends on your situation. In my case, my cable company (not a monopoly here, BTW...we have competing providers) provides everything that I am interested in "Copy Freely" form, which means there are absolutely no restrictions on the recordings (I can keep them forever, send them to anybody I want, play them back on any system, edit and transcode them, etc). For me, these devices are going to do everything I could want, for only a fraction of what it would cost to use an HD-PVR.
Will it work for what you want? Perhaps not. But it will work perfectly for a ton of people, including me.
The point is, they are here now and usable (in at least some circumstances) under linux. If you are in a situation where you CAN use one of these devices, then it works out to be superior to the HD-PVR. With a CableCard device, you pay under $300 for the device up front, you only have to rent one cablecard for about $2-4/month, and it only consumes about 10 watts or less of electricity. This will get you 3-4 tuners. To get 3 tuners with HD-PVRs, your up front cost is going to be more than $500 (maybe $400 with the Colossus, though that isn't yet supported under linux), you have to rent a cable box for each one (about $8/month per box), each HD-PVR consumes about 8 watts of electricity, and each cable box will consume 20-50 watts of electricity (some even more).
For the cable card solution, your cost is $300 up front plus $24-$48/year for rental, and about $10/year for electricity. Your 3 year cost $402-$474.
For the HD-PVR solution, your cost is $500 up front, plus $288/year for rental, and about $20-$50/year for electricity. Your 3 year cost is $1424-$1514
That's a pretty huge advantage for the cablecard. Enough that, even if you've already invested in the HD-PVR solution, switching to cablecard will pay for itself in less than 2 years even if you just throw the HD-PVRs in the garbage.
Again, this only matters if your cable provider sets everything to "Copy Freely" and you don't need any of the premium content (and even if you do, you could just leave 1 HD-PVR around to handle those channels).
Of course, in my previous post, I forgot to add the following: You might be confused, because these don't appear to me to be just regular video capture cards. They appear to only work with security cameras. So the CableCard thing is a little off topic.
Ceton makes a 4-tuner internal CableCard device (already available), and Silicon Dust makes 3-tuner and 6-tuner network attached CableCard devices (available at end of July). Both devices will work under linux. The Ceton will have support in the next version of MythTV, and the Silicon Dust devices are already supported in the current version. The only downside is that they are limited under linux to only recording shows marked "Copy Freely". What this means will vary from cable company to cable company, and even from market to market. Comcast and Wide Open West tend to mark everything as "Copy Freely" in most markets, except for premium channels (HBO, Showtime, etc) and PPV. Other companies like Time Warner seem to mark most every as "Copy Once" or "Copy Never" (though in some cities users have found most everything "Copy Freely").
Just wait for the next tsunami/earthquake combo.
If a tsunami hits there, then I think we've got FAR bigger things to worry about:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Oconee+Nuclear+Station&aq=&sll=33.779147,-78.706055&sspn=6.883004,16.907959&ie=UTF8&hq=Oconee+Nuclear+Station&hnear=&z=7
I'd bet anything big enough to reach that far inland is big enough to wipe out our entire eastern coast, from Maine to Florida.
What's your point? Why would I care if they have compression? So I can watch my movie faster? It's not a general purpose cable. It's got a specific purpose and it fits that purpose perfectly without compression. You can send 8 channel bit-streamed audio + 1080p video (and much higher resolutions, actually) over it without a problem. Error correction? Who cares. I've never seen anybody that had signal problems with it that was caused by the HDMI cabling. And in the absolute rare case that it goes get a glitch, who cares? Oooooh, there will be a 1/4 second of blocking in your video or something. Shit, that happens regularly just in TV broadcasts. Not supporting closed captions? I'm not sure what your point is. It gets rendered into the video by the cable box/PVR. That's how the specification works. That's kind of like bitching that the audio isn't already pre-separated into high/medium/low frequencies.
some just want a solid cable that will last for 20 years and will not break during normal use.
Wow, you described some of my Radio Shack cables perfectly (actually, I think they've made it over 20 years)
The Obama White House cuts off access to news agencies that are critical of the Administration
Like which ones? The only one I was aware of was the "news" agency that blatantly makes up it's own "news", and went to court in order to win the right to lie in it's "news"casts.
It happens, but not in that way. Here's an example. Several years ago my mom's car was stolen. A few years later, the cops called to tell her they haven't recovered it, but they know what happened to it. A guy who worked at the dealership was accessing the key code database. This database contains the info necessary to produce a key for a vehicle without actually having access to the key (useful if you lose your only copy of the key). He used this info to manufacture keys for a buddy who actually went out and stole the cars. The only way they figured it out was because the manufacturer had access controls on that data, noticed a larger than usual number of accesses from one dealer, investigated and found that many of those vehicle were reported stolen.
So it does happen. And while the access controls allowed them to detect the breach after the fact, it was too late for my mom. The insurance payment certainly didn't make her whole. And in a home invasion, now you are more likely to have the thief actually confronting somebody, and you increase the chance of someone losing their life.
is there some clear advantage to 240v 50hz AC?
Perhaps you could lower the total number of branch circuits by going to higher voltage, but I don't know how many people would really care that they have 1/3 fewer breakers.
God, no. It's already bad enough that when I want to cut power to one room, I have to take out 2 other rooms with it. If anything, I want MORE breakers, even if they aren't electrically necessary
I agree. I was hoping to see the result of a 1km wave purely for amusement (or maybe to prepare for a future meteor impact in the ocean). I was severely disappointed. Also, it seems that 1000 meters is some strange cutoff point, as that actually shows less flooding than 999 meters.
When you say: people prefer - how the hell do you know that?
Because it's true. People like freedom. Try using air/rail to travel coast to coast, stopping at 15 landmarks along the way. Try using air/rail to visit relatives that live 2 hours away. Try using air/rail to pack up and move cross country. There's a ton of stuff that people love to do that you can't do nearly as easily (if at all) by air/rail. Yeah, if you are traveling often on business trips, or trying to take a week vacation in LA when you live in NYC, then people definitely love air for that. I'm not saying everyone would rather use roads, and I'm not saying roads are preferred unconditionally. Just that there are tons of people who prefer roads under many circumstances.
Apparently you are wrong, because what the people preferred was rail and air travel for mass transport, otherwise the roads would have existed on the merits of being a profitable investment in the market place, just like rail and air were.
I don't think this is a fair way to look at it. Roads could only be funded without taxes if they were all toll roads, but if you did that, you'd only have the most heavily used routes being funded, and one of the biggest advantages of roads (the flexibility to go pretty much anywhere) would be severely compromised.