A big portion of our bleeding economy is flowing out the giant bullet hole labeled "War against terror." and if we just stopped a _single_ _war_ that we're involved with we'd have a ton of money to put towards all sorts of stuff.
No, we wouldn't. That's bullshit. Former Comptroller General David Walker said years ago (2006ish) that we could stop the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, cut all waste from Washington, and the entire Pentagon budget, and we'd still be in trouble because of the untenable entitlement programs:
I'll grant you that the unnecesasry Iraq war exaberbates the problems, but it's a lie that we would have a "ton of money" to spend just ending that war. We did a lot more irresponsible spending on top of that like the recent Bush stimuluses, the bailouts (or for instance, the budget was never balanced during the Clinton years either, we just stole the surpluses from Social Security to put in the general fund and placed IOU in there). Seeing as David Walker was the nation's top non-partisan accountant, appointed by Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton, and that his numbers are hardly challenged, I'll take his word for it over yours.
Well, if you have software on your $400 laptop that can do the digital to analog / analog to digital just like you say, the solution is clear: hold one laptop up to each ear.
That's still going to be $800, but that's a lil' cheaper than the $1200 pair you were looking at.
That's just silly. Holding them up, really, is that the best you can come up with? It's obvious that they should be suspended as earrings.
But this is why it's important to wear ear protection for such seemingly innocuous tasks such as mowing the lawn (or any loud task, really). So many kids back then and still these days listening to their personal music players via headphones where you can hear the music from across the street. It's just stupid and a few $ of protection today will save you $$$ in the long run.
I have relatives going deaf with age, watching TV with them is not fun. TV volumes set at a level wear I have to wear ear protection.
I owned a 6" Kindle 2 for a while. E-ink has promise, but it's vastly overrated right now imo. I used to think e-ink was all that before getting one. The major problem I had with the Kindle 2 was contrast. It was black and white. It was dark grey on medium/light grey/beige. Yuck. I really hated it. Same with the Sony PRS reader I saw.
The nice thing with the iPad is that it has a IPS screen rather than a run-of-the-mill screen (nice), but on top of that, an ambient light sensor, which imho is what is missing on most desktop monitors. I hate looking at monitors where they don't match the surrounding rooms light level in any way, the worst for me is being on a computer in a pitch black room (which may be why movie theater also leaves the light on dimmed during a movie and not shut them off completely).
After that point, what is the different if the screen is backlit or reflective like e-ink? Either way, photons hit your eyes either originating from or reflecting off that surface. Even with a ambient sensor, I wouldn't be on a computer in a completely darkened room, but then again, you couldn't read the e-ink screen in such a scenario either. Now, if would be nice if it were an OLED screen too, where the blacks aren't dark grey and the contrast was through the roof - but I guess we'll have to wait.
Nice thing about T-mobile is that if you have a locked phone on their network in the US, you can use a prepaid or regular sim by them over there in same phone. I have tried this and it works.
There are real uses for multitasking, which the iPhone already does - like listening to iPod while surfing or the like. Maybe chat as mentioned, but I also hope to set which apps can be multitasking - I don't trust the developers always to make the correct call - there is no reason to leave a game running in the background while I surf, it would be better to save state. I would actually say saving state and resuming again is better the vast majority of times over running in the background.
But oftentimes I try to hang up the phone by hitting the home button instead of the end call button (even though I think I did), and while surfing, I still see that "Return to Call" blinking on top.
To conserve battery life, I already turned off push notifications and other things. And I would turn off multitasking for my parents phones, they hardly can use a computer as it. With this, they'll only be wondering why the phone battery is dying even faster.
The mother is only speculating why, since she can't ask the kid who's dead.
What about this? She was 3! Three year old like playing with things. They left a loaded gun out in the open. I wouldn't leave an unloaded gun around my 10 year old nephews.
On a more serious note, we now have more millionaires and billionaires than at any other time in the history of the world! The wealth is trickling down baby!
While I'm sure that there is more economic activity than ever before, since a dollar today is worth less than 4 cents in 1913 -- being a millionaire is not exactly the same accomplishment as back then. It's more equivalent to being having $25 million today.
I don't think so. Things get lost in translation with humans already. There are phrases I simply can't translate in languages I'm fluent in, idioms and the like. And when humans pass along information, it also gets distorted, simplified, and the like - language is a vague, flexible thing. So we're trying to give the machine a test impossible to pass, a Turing test where most of us don't even have any real experience how well a human would do it as a frame of reference.
It would be better just to translate many pieces one time, both ways, and have a fluent bilingual judge the quality. Although, I agree, checking the Chinese/Japanese to English capability is a good test.
My personal test was to take reviews off of amazon.co.jp and translate them and see how the translator fared. Babelfish is indeed a bunch of babble, while Google's translation is far from perfect (or even all that good), it's obviously better.
Today, Windows 7 (NOT AN UPGRADE) [amazon.com] goes for $178.54 on Amazon and lists for $199. According to the Minneapolis Fed [minneapolisfed.org], $99 in 1985 is worth $200.21 in 2010 - in other Words, inflation adjusted, Microsoft hasn't raised the price of Windows. And if you include all of the programs that are included with Windows 7 that you would normally have had to have purchased separately back in '85 (compression, file management, image viewers, etc, etc...) Windows has gone down dramatically. Now, they've been labeled a monopoly in court, but they're pricing isn't that of a monopolist. Actually, they've given the consumer a really nice value.
What happened to hardware prices during that same time?
I don't see why it's necessary. Any compromise reached will just be another stepping stone in their agenda and they will be one step closer then, even if they get frustrated momentarily without total passage.
What's the old adage about bargaining - start way higher than your actual goals and then during negotiations inch lower on your demands but at least you end up with what you wanted. But at least with a negotiation, both sides get something they need and want. What are we getting in return that we don't already have?
I would not recommend buying a Mac - I bought one because that is the only way to develop for the iPhone/iPod Touch (still haven't gotten around too it). It is true Mac offers little options.
In fact, it's almost what the OP sounds like he wants, but then again, he could be buying any prebuilt. I always thought the CPU market was getting too complicated for the layperson, coming from a time when you could just look at a Pentium and judge it based on MHz.
Beyond RAM, very few people actually upgrade their computers, they'll just buy a new one every 4-5 years. If I had to upgrade beyond RAM/HARD_DRIVE, I usually don't myself -- whatever still fits in the old socket isn't a big enough bump anyway, replacing the motherboard can give a good speed increase but that means getting the ram to match it, as well as a CPU, and you're well on your way to a new computer. Gamers might opt for a new video card, but few people beyond that segment actually push theirs.
And for many people, the savings just don't equate to the time spent on all this crap. And often, if you're already a computer oriented person, what you learn is relevant in only such a short frame of time, it's not even much of an educational lesson.
Second, I remember a time when, if someone needed stitches or a cast, they went to their doctor's office. The ER was where the ambulance took you if your brains were hanging out of your skull.
Yeah, but it was after hours and I shredded my leg cutting down some trees and was afraid I got metal splinters in the wound as well. I also didn't have a tetanus shot in years.
I'd rather pay an inflated hospital bill for stiches than pay an inflated bill for gangrene later on.
It's not just insurance, which is why I don't understand the current debate as making insurance the only bad guys.
I know someone who broke their leg. While in the waiting room, they asked the staff for a blanket because they were cold. They got an equivalent of an airline blanket in size and quality. The hospital charged him $395 for it plus labor.
Someone else I know needed aspirin. The staff got him one and charged $725.
I went to the hospital for stiches. Got an X-ray to check for metal parts. Had no insurance. Got charged $3500 or so. They didn't even stich, just stapled 20 staples.
Considering the shrinkwrap and the contents of the box, to this day I suspect a factory worker took home a little souveneir... but who knows?
I would think a factory worker could do it without troubling a customer like that. More people than factory workers have access to shrinkwrapping machines, iirc, in the 1990s, some stores had them so they could sell returned games as new... but then a worker would steal a game and cover it up like this. It's also entirely possible that a previous customer returned the game like that.
Will all 500 users connect at the same time and continuously (like some type of LAN party w/o the LAN) or is this much more haphazard and random with far less users at any one time?
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No, we wouldn't. That's bullshit. Former Comptroller General David Walker said years ago (2006ish) that we could stop the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, cut all waste from Washington, and the entire Pentagon budget, and we'd still be in trouble because of the untenable entitlement programs:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7461407498377956300
I'll grant you that the unnecesasry Iraq war exaberbates the problems, but it's a lie that we would have a "ton of money" to spend just ending that war. We did a lot more irresponsible spending on top of that like the recent Bush stimuluses, the bailouts (or for instance, the budget was never balanced during the Clinton years either, we just stole the surpluses from Social Security to put in the general fund and placed IOU in there). Seeing as David Walker was the nation's top non-partisan accountant, appointed by Reagan, Bush I, and Clinton, and that his numbers are hardly challenged, I'll take his word for it over yours.
Require the use of GPS to automatically set the advertised rates at the correct points. Don't let the drivers flick the switch themselves.
That's just silly. Holding them up, really, is that the best you can come up with? It's obvious that they should be suspended as earrings.
Which is kind of insane thinking about it, a hearing aid is different from a heart stint with magnitudes order different levels of risk.
But this is why it's important to wear ear protection for such seemingly innocuous tasks such as mowing the lawn (or any loud task, really). So many kids back then and still these days listening to their personal music players via headphones where you can hear the music from across the street. It's just stupid and a few $ of protection today will save you $$$ in the long run.
I have relatives going deaf with age, watching TV with them is not fun. TV volumes set at a level wear I have to wear ear protection.
I owned a 6" Kindle 2 for a while. E-ink has promise, but it's vastly overrated right now imo. I used to think e-ink was all that before getting one. The major problem I had with the Kindle 2 was contrast. It was black and white. It was dark grey on medium/light grey/beige. Yuck. I really hated it. Same with the Sony PRS reader I saw.
The nice thing with the iPad is that it has a IPS screen rather than a run-of-the-mill screen (nice), but on top of that, an ambient light sensor, which imho is what is missing on most desktop monitors. I hate looking at monitors where they don't match the surrounding rooms light level in any way, the worst for me is being on a computer in a pitch black room (which may be why movie theater also leaves the light on dimmed during a movie and not shut them off completely).
After that point, what is the different if the screen is backlit or reflective like e-ink? Either way, photons hit your eyes either originating from or reflecting off that surface. Even with a ambient sensor, I wouldn't be on a computer in a completely darkened room, but then again, you couldn't read the e-ink screen in such a scenario either. Now, if would be nice if it were an OLED screen too, where the blacks aren't dark grey and the contrast was through the roof - but I guess we'll have to wait.
Nice thing about T-mobile is that if you have a locked phone on their network in the US, you can use a prepaid or regular sim by them over there in same phone. I have tried this and it works.
I believe they won because of contract law, not copyright law.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract
There are real uses for multitasking, which the iPhone already does - like listening to iPod while surfing or the like. Maybe chat as mentioned, but I also hope to set which apps can be multitasking - I don't trust the developers always to make the correct call - there is no reason to leave a game running in the background while I surf, it would be better to save state. I would actually say saving state and resuming again is better the vast majority of times over running in the background.
But oftentimes I try to hang up the phone by hitting the home button instead of the end call button (even though I think I did), and while surfing, I still see that "Return to Call" blinking on top.
To conserve battery life, I already turned off push notifications and other things. And I would turn off multitasking for my parents phones, they hardly can use a computer as it. With this, they'll only be wondering why the phone battery is dying even faster.
the parents.
The mother is only speculating why, since she can't ask the kid who's dead.
What about this? She was 3! Three year old like playing with things. They left a loaded gun out in the open. I wouldn't leave an unloaded gun around my 10 year old nephews.
While I'm sure that there is more economic activity than ever before, since a dollar today is worth less than 4 cents in 1913 -- being a millionaire is not exactly the same accomplishment as back then. It's more equivalent to being having $25 million today.
rather than what people spend on the games. And I mean at the workplace, not at home.
I don't think so. Things get lost in translation with humans already. There are phrases I simply can't translate in languages I'm fluent in, idioms and the like. And when humans pass along information, it also gets distorted, simplified, and the like - language is a vague, flexible thing. So we're trying to give the machine a test impossible to pass, a Turing test where most of us don't even have any real experience how well a human would do it as a frame of reference.
It would be better just to translate many pieces one time, both ways, and have a fluent bilingual judge the quality. Although, I agree, checking the Chinese/Japanese to English capability is a good test.
My personal test was to take reviews off of amazon.co.jp and translate them and see how the translator fared. Babelfish is indeed a bunch of babble, while Google's translation is far from perfect (or even all that good), it's obviously better.
And when it gets corrupted, she'll go to the Apple store demanding to know why her cell phone doesn't work anymore.
(My old Razr is a computer too... turing complete and everything. Doesn't mean I view it like a desktop either.)
Yo dawg, I heard you like to crank your yank, so we installed a crank to power your computer, so you can crank while you crank your yank.
What happened to hardware prices during that same time?
I don't see why it's necessary. Any compromise reached will just be another stepping stone in their agenda and they will be one step closer then, even if they get frustrated momentarily without total passage.
What's the old adage about bargaining - start way higher than your actual goals and then during negotiations inch lower on your demands but at least you end up with what you wanted. But at least with a negotiation, both sides get something they need and want. What are we getting in return that we don't already have?
Limiting choices is something Apple does on purpose and for a reason:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/265499/march-04-2010/barry-schwartz
or
http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-More-Less/dp/0060005688
In fact, it's almost what the OP sounds like he wants, but then again, he could be buying any prebuilt. I always thought the CPU market was getting too complicated for the layperson, coming from a time when you could just look at a Pentium and judge it based on MHz.
Beyond RAM, very few people actually upgrade their computers, they'll just buy a new one every 4-5 years. If I had to upgrade beyond RAM/HARD_DRIVE, I usually don't myself -- whatever still fits in the old socket isn't a big enough bump anyway, replacing the motherboard can give a good speed increase but that means getting the ram to match it, as well as a CPU, and you're well on your way to a new computer. Gamers might opt for a new video card, but few people beyond that segment actually push theirs.
And for many people, the savings just don't equate to the time spent on all this crap. And often, if you're already a computer oriented person, what you learn is relevant in only such a short frame of time, it's not even much of an educational lesson.
Yeah, but it was after hours and I shredded my leg cutting down some trees and was afraid I got metal splinters in the wound as well. I also didn't have a tetanus shot in years.
I'd rather pay an inflated hospital bill for stiches than pay an inflated bill for gangrene later on.
Al Gore is not going to be happy.
It's not just insurance, which is why I don't understand the current debate as making insurance the only bad guys.
I know someone who broke their leg. While in the waiting room, they asked the staff for a blanket because they were cold. They got an equivalent of an airline blanket in size and quality. The hospital charged him $395 for it plus labor.
Someone else I know needed aspirin. The staff got him one and charged $725.
I went to the hospital for stiches. Got an X-ray to check for metal parts. Had no insurance. Got charged $3500 or so. They didn't even stich, just stapled 20 staples.
There's a lot wrong with the picture.
I would think a factory worker could do it without troubling a customer like that. More people than factory workers have access to shrinkwrapping machines, iirc, in the 1990s, some stores had them so they could sell returned games as new... but then a worker would steal a game and cover it up like this. It's also entirely possible that a previous customer returned the game like that.
Good luck on a one way highway.
Oh, please, we're talking about a fucking video game. Not about someone starving to death or losing their dignity in some way.
Will all 500 users connect at the same time and continuously (like some type of LAN party w/o the LAN) or is this much more haphazard and random with far less users at any one time?