Not true, improper use of solar is expensive. If you want to lay out major, major square footage of photovoltaic. You can also use a cheap 1 meter diameter parabolic dish (1m mass-manufactured from sturdy plastic, should cost less than $30). Put at the focus a 6 inch diameter PV (specially heat resistant for the added focus, an Australian company made/patented this type for their huge 6m parabolic dish), shouldn't be too expensive - $100-200 at most? And then a battery/inverter set-up to be as cheap as possible. Or a more expensive option is to have it convert water->hydrogen during day in a tank and burn it at night in a generator. I recently could buy a 1500W generator new (at Aldi) for $199. So the cost is up to $430 plus cost of that tank (say like propane tank for barbecue $50) and a small compressor for hydrogen. I'm sure I didn't account for all the parts on the more expensive option but you get the point. Plus I'm sure there will be a discount because this is all individual parts at a retail price.
TFA: "Kamen's goal is to produce machines that cost $1,000 to $2,000 each. That's a far cry from the $100,000 that each hand-machined prototype cost to build."
No matter how stupid, useless and over-hyped the Segway was, Dean Kamen is still a fucking genius and the closest thing we have to a Thomas Edison in our generation.
Perhaps you mean Tesla:) Edison was more businessman than inventor.....
Yes, but couldn't you intercept the key the website sends, redirect it in an internal network to a computer with an TPM chip, find the value it returns, send it to the site but download all content to your non-TPM computer?
And if the files have a TPM mechanism to unencypt themselves, doing something pretty damn similiar but capturing the file stream?
Someday, TPM may be *required* to boot mainstream commercial operating systems, like Windows and Mac OS X, and be *required* to use mainstream consumer services, like, say, online video and music stores, and so on.
I see great difficulty in this happening (with websites) because the return code can be manipulated easily, sortof like how Opera can tell a website it's really IE. Someone could just run a program that emulates the TPM chip for all intents and purposes of interacting with outside elements.
Not trying to flame here but I just don't get why everyone wants to install Linux and Windows on expensive Mac hardware.
I like to be able to dual-boot into linux for those Linux apps like Gnucash, which Intuit would like to charge me an arm and a leg for. I could use Gnucash in Mac, but the setup is overly hard (even with Fink and Fink commander) and then half the things don't work right, like printing without me spending half-a-day trying to figure it out. In ubuntu, I can just apt-get and forget it most of the time. I need to get work done, not configure my PC.
I don't need to run Windows, but I'd imagine some people are in a similiar situation with a must have program.
The nice thing with Macintel is that perhaps someone can get Windows/Linux may run on top MacOSX (like Inferno for various operating system), no rebooting or anything.
But, replacing nuclear isn't possible. Nuclear energy provides the baseline for power generation, and the amount generated per unit time is almost never altered. So, you might reduce the consumption of coal, natural gas, or fuel oil, but not nuclear.
Nor would I want that replaced - it's cleaner than coal. Though Fusion would be an ideal solution for all parties concerned.....
Firewire is for those who want to do video. As a hobby or full-time basis. Using USB or USB2.0 for that is just Masochistic for that. I won't despise people for using USB, just pity them.
Your VCR/Betamax analogy is flawed - USB/Firewire is not a zero sum game with only one winner. There's room for both because they both fill a different niche. I wouldn't use (and can't find) a Firewire keyboard.
Your analogy would fit in better with the old IDE/SCSI debate of the 90s except Firewire is more ubiquitous.
High-end PCs? My Medion is over two years old and cost $800. Yet it has Firewire - two of them. Hardly top of the line. For a desktop, PC not to have Firewire, it must really be a cheapo Walmart model.
A far, far better way to do this in most of the U.S.:
Put the solar cells on the roof, and feed the power back into the grid, lowering your electric bills and your grid power consumption. Then buy a normal car. The grid will burn less coal, balancing out your auto emissions.
Again, this is how you look at it. If you want to wean the country from oil - the car solution is a better step in that direction. Afterall, that electricity could also be from a Nuclear Power Plant, which is relatively clean. Especially if you consider the number of years it takes to recoup costs from a photovoltaic unit and consider how dirty it is to manufacture.
If you want absolute efficiency, a PV unit isn't the way to go. Efficiency ranges from 15-30%. You can have near %75-85 or more efficiency if you use solar heat collectors of various sort (rooftop) and use that to heat your water/house. They are also much cleaner to manufacture for the environment.
If you really wanted electricity, perhaps a better solution would be a parabolic dish with a special heat resistant PV unit near the center or a stirling engine at the focus. Here the PV unit will be much smaller (cheaper? but cleaner for the environment in any case, this specific technique has been used in Australia btw), and the parabolic dish would track the sun - which would provide more energy in the end.
There are various ways to do this without necessitating the need for a large PV unit that will be more expensive and dirtier in manufacture for the environment (harsh chemicals).
Um, that's kindof the point of dual-fuel. It's a chicken and the egg problem - would you rather have them wait for the infrastructure? Which will never come because there are no cars on the road that take hydrogen. Because there is no infrastructure?
Also, corn would not be the only way to get hydrogen. Try electrolysis. Put a few solar panels on the roof, let that electricity seperate water into oxygen and hydrogen and collect in a tank. Inefficient - yes. But feasible. Want something more efficient? Use steam electrolysis (which is more efficient) by putting up a parabolic mirror and heating a core of water to the required temperature (2500 C) and splitting the molecules that way. Some obstacles to overcome - but no reason it needing acres of land when the acreage of a roof should suffice.
Sometimes the only way forward with this technology is to take a few steps back because it's more realistic to accept it won't be as good (convenient) as gas overnight. Gasoline had years of market acceptance to develop these advantages.
A lot of EU companies moved their "headquarters" there to take advantage of much lower corporate taxes. A lot of companies aren't really Irish in the historical, cultural, or any other sense.
The Irish people won't be able to change these companies through boycott (Ireland represents a small market nor a large workforce) and the government there would be reluctant to change the law - driving out the very companies they sought to bring in initially.
Perhaps corporations can be forced to certain standards in the same vein that a US citizen still has to follow certain laws even outside the country - like not visiting Cuba (w/o permission), or acts of treason.....
Anyway, I'm still sitting on the fence. If a US company doesn't exploit certain realities in other countries (lets say child labor), what is to stop, say an Irish company from doing the same and selling a similiar product to Wal-mart for less. It might be helpful to look at the factors that caused Child Labor to pretty much stop in the UK and in America.....
I've researched Fingerworks for a while (look at my other post on this thread) - I have to ask on the keyboard itself - after a while is it as fast and accurate as a regular keyboard or do your fingers drift and you get accidental stroke input?
It reminds me very much of Fingerworks technology with multi-touch technology with gestures of various sorts. More gestures here. On the surface, it looks like the exact same technology as the touchpads/keyboards but on the screen.
This company is now out of business (actually sold out VERY QUIETLY by Apple for the patents) and supposedly being used in the new iPod (I don't own one so I can't verify). It's really too bad, I always wanted their keyboard because it acts as a mouse too (on either side, plus has editable gestures plus a built in Emacs set plus a programming pad without moving your hand....)
Plus it has been suspected that Apple are using those patents now and applying for more patents for a Tablet that will have similiar capabilities.
Plus there's another company that has something for the music market that I find cool (but expensive).
Once the Internet came along, senders and receivers alike began to believe that a formal tone was unnecessary to the otherwise informal communications. The result was that users began deciding the tone of the message by how new the sender was to the forum. If he was new, then his tone was automatically assumed hostile and his content full of stupidities. If he was old, then the tone was automatically seen as friendly and smart. This led to the situation of new forum members being forced to walk on eggshells until they were accepted by their peers.
I would hazard a guess that it's like this with many (informal, perhaps formal as well but better hidden) social situations as well whether you are "new to the team" or an old colleague.
Not to cast aspersions, but the problem is people like you, who've never had to deal with real depression.
Uh, now you are a telepath? I'm done with this discussion - you are deliberately taking everything I type out of context and putting words in my mouth.
But at the same time it's not fair to lump all forms of depression into just being anti-social and lazy.
That's not what I'm said at all. I know from myself when I'm feeling depressed, it's usually because I've been cooped up too long. The last time was when I had a leg brace on and thus couldn't get exercise - I felt sicker because of the brace.
I also knew a colleague who became very rich and insisted on retiring around 50, from all his work, to live like a stereotypical senior citizen retiree - meaning sitting at home watching TV, waiting to die - his own words - all day because, of course, that was the way to live the good life for "someone who made it."
Within 6 months, his hair grayed, he gained 50 pounds, and looked 20 years older. Fuck, he even walked like an old man with a slight hunch in his posture. All this from a guy who loved his work and looked 40 y/o previously. (He's now working again and happier.)
Attitude means a shitload.
You'll also find that suicide is more common among people who live in dark/rainy areas and people who are less active. There's a strong correlation there.
Is that they never get out - see the sun or get excercise. 30 minutes a day wards off all types of ailments, including depression (when was the last time a psychologist prescribed this?)
I heard in China that they have mandatory exercise (in some parts, like around 20 minutes a day) throughout the day, including outdoor community facilities which people are encourage to use. I wonder how Japan, especially Tokyo, is in this regard - especially office workers.
Learning the language itself usually doens't take more than a day.
Not in my experience. Only if you are familiar to a similiar language. C++->Java, C,C++->C#
Not C->Lisp or C->Haskell or C->BrainFuck
Learning to read a language in a day can be easily done, but that's not "learning" or being fluent in a language.
Reading is easy. Writing takes a bit more experience.
Or maybe I'm just slow.
(BTW, this is why I asked passing knowledge or true fluency. I know a lot of people who claim they are fluent in human language X and can listen with close to %100 comprehension, but when it comes time for them to speak - they stumbled every third word....)
During school, my friend tried one of those programs that gave you money for surfing with their program as it served up new ads, every minute or so, on the top 20% of the screen. And he was trying to sign up everyone up left and right as it was a pyramid program.
Anyway, to trick the program he was surfing, he wrote a simple WinAPI program that moved the mouse every few seconds, perhaps later versions actually clicked on links, don't know.
I think the most he ever got in a check was like $27 one month, but I'd hate to see how his electric bill increased with a desktop on 24/7.
Some people aren't too bright (or value their time too highly....)
If they did count computer languages, i'm sure most competent computer programmers would know about 10 languages, and would be able to figure out the rest of them after sitting down with a bunch of code and a manual for a couple weeks or less.
10? That seems kind of high for the average programmer with an average amount of experience. Is that with true fluency or just passing knowledge?
With passing knowledge, I can learn one in a day. With fluency, some would take months depending on the size of the language.
What have they done lately that's all that exciting?
Rerelease their decomposing classics (again) or some Dragonball game?
Sorry, but dinosaurs have to go extinct. I never admired how the company was run and after Bushnell, the management always seemed like a bunch of know-nothing (or at least second-rate) PHBs when it wasn't a roach (lawyer) motel raking in the cash from IP lawsuits.
Ironically, shouldn't that have been copyright infringement on Disney's part?
If somebody came up with something so similiar to Mickey Mouse for the same audience (not parody), I'm sure Disney would send out the big guns to deal with it.
My place takes 15 minutes by car (one way). I'm not about to spend 60+ minutes (2 gallons gas = ~$5 for the 2 trips to get and give back, back and forth) on a car ride so I can "interact" with a shop clerk over whether I want goobers with my DVD. That whole process of picking out, recieving and returning take less than 7 minutes with Netflix.
Plus the local place has shitty anime (only thing I want anymore) and the ones they do are constantly being rented, thus when I went back to blockbuster in the day, I constantly had to go away without my 1st, 2nd, 3rd choice - and if I was feeling masochistic picked an alternative 4rth choice that likely sucks to make the trip "worth it."
Who's your auto/home/life insurer? How did you choose that company?
Quotes on the internet. Took it based on price and coverage.
Turns out Geico isn't the cheapest (by far for a young male driver).
What kind of car/truck/motorcycle do you drive (if any)?
Still have the old beater bought (not given to me) from my parents - got a better price than dealership, was a better car than I could buy for new, knew what type of treatment it recieved and repair history, how much bad karma the car has (reliability), etcetera. What they drove, I drove.
What makes you think that car/whatever is better than another (better enough to buy, at least)?
I don't.
On a side note, I grew up idolizing a certain German car manufacturer as great cars that I would like to have one day, but in the meantime, because of bad press and complaints from some of my friends (rushed out to buy one after landing his job after college) - mostly about the electrical system and it's constant failures - I got over it.
Now it's Toyota/Honda or some other manufacture with a genuine reputation out there - (not an advertised one - "Ford - Quality is Job 1!")
What's your favorite breakfast cereal?
Kashi GoLean or Golean Crunch
Selected after reading the nutrional label - needed a high fiber/high protein cereal a few years back. Never saw advertising for it before that point.
What kind of shoes are you wearing?
Actually didn't know this one till you asked:)
Puma - were lightest athlete shoes in Walmart ($16). That, overall design, and price was all my decision was based on. I really don't care about who made it anymore as long as I don't have a previous bad experience with them. As a teenager, I really cared about my shoes and only wore Nikes but that ridiculous stage is long gone. And the Nikes weren't any better. I'd still wear Nike if they were cheaper.
What's your favorite soft drink?
Fresca. Never seen advertising before I tasted this in college. Plus it's 0 calorie.
Do you own an iPod?
No.
But I think you tricked me into answering a survey which I almost never do!:) Perhaps you discovered a decent data mining strategy....
Anyway, most of my moderate to expensive purchases (or even moderate) come from experience (brandnames I trust), friends/family who tell me about it because they already own it, or from forums on the net (both word of mouth).
Since I willingly buy generic brands (especially household stuff) and based on price/quality ratio - most mass advertising is wasted on me unless it's exposing me to a new product I've never heard of before.
Many manufactures would be better off to stick shotgun advertising budget into improving the quality of their product ensuring word of mouth instead or making it cheaper to the consumer......
Though a slick design in their products also help (Apple).
[quote]Do you know anything about any of the people on the team?[/quote]
Yes, quite a few. None that I know have the leadership I was mentioning. But I'm not saying there isn't talent there, just not an effective cat herder.
[quote]Carmack switched engines 12 times for Doom 3.[/quote]
Carmack writes rendering engines, the game around them are incidental;)
Slashdot Mirror
Not true, improper use of solar is expensive. If you want to lay out major, major square footage of photovoltaic. You can also use a cheap 1 meter diameter parabolic dish (1m mass-manufactured from sturdy plastic, should cost less than $30). Put at the focus a 6 inch diameter PV (specially heat resistant for the added focus, an Australian company made/patented this type for their huge 6m parabolic dish), shouldn't be too expensive - $100-200 at most? And then a battery/inverter set-up to be as cheap as possible. Or a more expensive option is to have it convert water->hydrogen during day in a tank and burn it at night in a generator. I recently could buy a 1500W generator new (at Aldi) for $199. So the cost is up to $430 plus cost of that tank (say like propane tank for barbecue $50) and a small compressor for hydrogen. I'm sure I didn't account for all the parts on the more expensive option but you get the point. Plus I'm sure there will be a discount because this is all individual parts at a retail price.
TFA:
"Kamen's goal is to produce machines that cost $1,000 to $2,000 each. That's a far cry from the $100,000 that each hand-machined prototype cost to build."
Perhaps you mean Tesla:) Edison was more businessman than inventor.....
Yes, but couldn't you intercept the key the website sends, redirect it in an internal network to a computer with an TPM chip, find the value it returns, send it to the site but download all content to your non-TPM computer?
And if the files have a TPM mechanism to unencypt themselves, doing something pretty damn similiar but capturing the file stream?
(I'll read the links later)
I see great difficulty in this happening (with websites) because the return code can be manipulated easily, sortof like how Opera can tell a website it's really IE. Someone could just run a program that emulates the TPM chip for all intents and purposes of interacting with outside elements.
I like to be able to dual-boot into linux for those Linux apps like Gnucash, which Intuit would like to charge me an arm and a leg for. I could use Gnucash in Mac, but the setup is overly hard (even with Fink and Fink commander) and then half the things don't work right, like printing without me spending half-a-day trying to figure it out. In ubuntu, I can just apt-get and forget it most of the time. I need to get work done, not configure my PC.
I don't need to run Windows, but I'd imagine some people are in a similiar situation with a must have program.
The nice thing with Macintel is that perhaps someone can get Windows/Linux may run on top MacOSX (like Inferno for various operating system), no rebooting or anything.
But 90% of the time, I work in OSX anyway.
Nor would I want that replaced - it's cleaner than coal. Though Fusion would be an ideal solution for all parties concerned.....
Firewire is for those who want to do video. As a hobby or full-time basis. Using USB or USB2.0 for that is just Masochistic for that. I won't despise people for using USB, just pity them.
Your VCR/Betamax analogy is flawed - USB/Firewire is not a zero sum game with only one winner. There's room for both because they both fill a different niche. I wouldn't use (and can't find) a Firewire keyboard.
Your analogy would fit in better with the old IDE/SCSI debate of the 90s except Firewire is more ubiquitous.
High-end PCs? My Medion is over two years old and cost $800. Yet it has Firewire - two of them. Hardly top of the line. For a desktop, PC not to have Firewire, it must really be a cheapo Walmart model.
Again, this is how you look at it. If you want to wean the country from oil - the car solution is a better step in that direction. Afterall, that electricity could also be from a Nuclear Power Plant, which is relatively clean. Especially if you consider the number of years it takes to recoup costs from a photovoltaic unit and consider how dirty it is to manufacture.
If you want absolute efficiency, a PV unit isn't the way to go. Efficiency ranges from 15-30%. You can have near %75-85 or more efficiency if you use solar heat collectors of various sort (rooftop) and use that to heat your water/house. They are also much cleaner to manufacture for the environment.
If you really wanted electricity, perhaps a better solution would be a parabolic dish with a special heat resistant PV unit near the center or a stirling engine at the focus. Here the PV unit will be much smaller (cheaper? but cleaner for the environment in any case, this specific technique has been used in Australia btw), and the parabolic dish would track the sun - which would provide more energy in the end.
There are various ways to do this without necessitating the need for a large PV unit that will be more expensive and dirtier in manufacture for the environment (harsh chemicals).
Um, that's kindof the point of dual-fuel. It's a chicken and the egg problem - would you rather have them wait for the infrastructure? Which will never come because there are no cars on the road that take hydrogen. Because there is no infrastructure?
Also, corn would not be the only way to get hydrogen. Try electrolysis. Put a few solar panels on the roof, let that electricity seperate water into oxygen and hydrogen and collect in a tank. Inefficient - yes. But feasible. Want something more efficient? Use steam electrolysis (which is more efficient) by putting up a parabolic mirror and heating a core of water to the required temperature (2500 C) and splitting the molecules that way. Some obstacles to overcome - but no reason it needing acres of land when the acreage of a roof should suffice.
Sometimes the only way forward with this technology is to take a few steps back because it's more realistic to accept it won't be as good (convenient) as gas overnight. Gasoline had years of market acceptance to develop these advantages.
A lot of EU companies moved their "headquarters" there to take advantage of much lower corporate taxes. A lot of companies aren't really Irish in the historical, cultural, or any other sense.
The Irish people won't be able to change these companies through boycott (Ireland represents a small market nor a large workforce) and the government there would be reluctant to change the law - driving out the very companies they sought to bring in initially.
Perhaps corporations can be forced to certain standards in the same vein that a US citizen still has to follow certain laws even outside the country - like not visiting Cuba (w/o permission), or acts of treason.....
Anyway, I'm still sitting on the fence. If a US company doesn't exploit certain realities in other countries (lets say child labor), what is to stop, say an Irish company from doing the same and selling a similiar product to Wal-mart for less. It might be helpful to look at the factors that caused Child Labor to pretty much stop in the UK and in America.....
I've researched Fingerworks for a while (look at my other post on this thread) - I have to ask on the keyboard itself - after a while is it as fast and accurate as a regular keyboard or do your fingers drift and you get accidental stroke input?
It reminds me very much of Fingerworks technology with multi-touch technology with gestures of various sorts. More gestures here. On the surface, it looks like the exact same technology as the touchpads/keyboards but on the screen.
This company is now out of business (actually sold out VERY QUIETLY by Apple for the patents) and supposedly being used in the new iPod (I don't own one so I can't verify). It's really too bad, I always wanted their keyboard because it acts as a mouse too (on either side, plus has editable gestures plus a built in Emacs set plus a programming pad without moving your hand....)
Plus it has been suspected that Apple are using those patents now and applying for more patents for a Tablet that will have similiar capabilities.
Plus there's another company that has something for the music market that I find cool (but expensive).
I would hazard a guess that it's like this with many (informal, perhaps formal as well but better hidden) social situations as well whether you are "new to the team" or an old colleague.
Uh, now you are a telepath? I'm done with this discussion - you are deliberately taking everything I type out of context and putting words in my mouth.
That's not what I'm said at all. I know from myself when I'm feeling depressed, it's usually because I've been cooped up too long. The last time was when I had a leg brace on and thus couldn't get exercise - I felt sicker because of the brace.
I also knew a colleague who became very rich and insisted on retiring around 50, from all his work, to live like a stereotypical senior citizen retiree - meaning sitting at home watching TV, waiting to die - his own words - all day because, of course, that was the way to live the good life for "someone who made it."
Within 6 months, his hair grayed, he gained 50 pounds, and looked 20 years older. Fuck, he even walked like an old man with a slight hunch in his posture. All this from a guy who loved his work and looked 40 y/o previously. (He's now working again and happier.)
Attitude means a shitload.
You'll also find that suicide is more common among people who live in dark/rainy areas and people who are less active. There's a strong correlation there.
http://www.joplinglobe.com/story.php?story_id=226
Of course, it's not all cases (let's not go Tom Cruise here), but a lot more than one thinks.
Is that they never get out - see the sun or get excercise. 30 minutes a day wards off all types of ailments, including depression (when was the last time a psychologist prescribed this?)
I heard in China that they have mandatory exercise (in some parts, like around 20 minutes a day) throughout the day, including outdoor community facilities which people are encourage to use. I wonder how Japan, especially Tokyo, is in this regard - especially office workers.
Not in my experience. Only if you are familiar to a similiar language. C++->Java, C,C++->C#
Not C->Lisp or C->Haskell or C->BrainFuck
Learning to read a language in a day can be easily done, but that's not "learning" or being fluent in a language.
Reading is easy. Writing takes a bit more experience.
Or maybe I'm just slow.
(BTW, this is why I asked passing knowledge or true fluency. I know a lot of people who claim they are fluent in human language X and can listen with close to %100 comprehension, but when it comes time for them to speak - they stumbled every third word....)
During school, my friend tried one of those programs that gave you money for surfing with their program as it served up new ads, every minute or so, on the top 20% of the screen. And he was trying to sign up everyone up left and right as it was a pyramid program.
Anyway, to trick the program he was surfing, he wrote a simple WinAPI program that moved the mouse every few seconds, perhaps later versions actually clicked on links, don't know.
I think the most he ever got in a check was like $27 one month, but I'd hate to see how his electric bill increased with a desktop on 24/7.
Some people aren't too bright (or value their time too highly....)
10? That seems kind of high for the average programmer with an average amount of experience. Is that with true fluency or just passing knowledge?
With passing knowledge, I can learn one in a day. With fluency, some would take months depending on the size of the language.
What have they done lately that's all that exciting?
Rerelease their decomposing classics (again) or some Dragonball game?
Sorry, but dinosaurs have to go extinct. I never admired how the company was run and after Bushnell, the management always seemed like a bunch of know-nothing (or at least second-rate) PHBs when it wasn't a roach (lawyer) motel raking in the cash from IP lawsuits.
Good riddance. I hope this time they stay dead.
Ironically, shouldn't that have been copyright infringement on Disney's part?
If somebody came up with something so similiar to Mickey Mouse for the same audience (not parody), I'm sure Disney would send out the big guns to deal with it.
My place takes 15 minutes by car (one way). I'm not about to spend 60+ minutes (2 gallons gas = ~$5 for the 2 trips to get and give back, back and forth) on a car ride so I can "interact" with a shop clerk over whether I want goobers with my DVD. That whole process of picking out, recieving and returning take less than 7 minutes with Netflix.
Plus the local place has shitty anime (only thing I want anymore) and the ones they do are constantly being rented, thus when I went back to blockbuster in the day, I constantly had to go away without my 1st, 2nd, 3rd choice - and if I was feeling masochistic picked an alternative 4rth choice that likely sucks to make the trip "worth it."
No thanks.
Quotes on the internet. Took it based on price and coverage.
Turns out Geico isn't the cheapest (by far for a young male driver).
Still have the old beater bought (not given to me) from my parents - got a better price than dealership, was a better car than I could buy for new, knew what type of treatment it recieved and repair history, how much bad karma the car has (reliability), etcetera. What they drove, I drove.
I don't.
On a side note, I grew up idolizing a certain German car manufacturer as great cars that I would like to have one day, but in the meantime, because of bad press and complaints from some of my friends (rushed out to buy one after landing his job after college) - mostly about the electrical system and it's constant failures - I got over it.
Now it's Toyota/Honda or some other manufacture with a genuine reputation out there - (not an advertised one - "Ford - Quality is Job 1!")
Kashi GoLean or Golean Crunch
Selected after reading the nutrional label - needed a high fiber/high protein cereal a few years back. Never saw advertising for it before that point.
Actually didn't know this one till you asked:)
Puma - were lightest athlete shoes in Walmart ($16). That, overall design, and price was all my decision was based on. I really don't care about who made it anymore as long as I don't have a previous bad experience with them. As a teenager, I really cared about my shoes and only wore Nikes but that ridiculous stage is long gone. And the Nikes weren't any better. I'd still wear Nike if they were cheaper.
Fresca. Never seen advertising before I tasted this in college. Plus it's 0 calorie.
No.
But I think you tricked me into answering a survey which I almost never do!
Anyway, most of my moderate to expensive purchases (or even moderate) come from experience (brandnames I trust), friends/family who tell me about it because they already own it, or from forums on the net (both word of mouth).
Since I willingly buy generic brands (especially household stuff) and based on price/quality ratio - most mass advertising is wasted on me unless it's exposing me to a new product I've never heard of before.
Many manufactures would be better off to stick shotgun advertising budget into improving the quality of their product ensuring word of mouth instead or making it cheaper to the consumer......
Though a slick design in their products also help (Apple).
[quote]Do you know anything about any of the people on the team?[/quote]
Yes, quite a few. None that I know have the leadership I was mentioning. But I'm not saying there isn't talent there, just not an effective cat herder.
[quote]Carmack switched engines 12 times for Doom 3.[/quote]
Carmack writes rendering engines, the game around them are incidental;)