Cheap players had little to do with the initial success of DVD.
I'll have to disagree with you there. I bought my very first DVD player, which I still use, for the lofty price of $35. At the time, I was the first person I know to have one. Blockbuster was only starting to carry some DVD copies of the newer movies they carried on VHS. It was big news when the cheap DVD players first hit the markets and there were runs on them at the stores that sold them. The day I picked mine up everyone else in the checkout line had one as well. That was clearly the point at which the format became popular.
You don't have to actively kill them. Just stop feeding them. Make the food supply for each cell of the grid dependant on that grid's power output. If they stop generating, they die of starvation. That'll teach 'em.
In fact it should even teach them to produce electricity as efficently as possible. Thus making them better over time, instead of worse.
They should do what my damn cell phone company does: Knock the hardware down to like $99, and make me pay a very affordable $9.95 a month. If I try to cancel before 2 years are up, hit me with some obscene early termination fee.
They have started doing exactly that. And it will ruin them! I gave my brother an old TiVo I had lying around and when he tried to register it he was informed that he had to agree to 1 year of service with a $150 "early termination" penalty.
Interesting idea. But why not just direct sunlight down from the top of the shaft to translucent panels in the elevator ceiling *without* using fibers? Cheaper and fewer points of failure.
The enjoyment one feels from videogames comes from an established and long-understood series of basic ingredients. Conflict. Heroism. Adventure. Challenge. Triumph. These are visceral things that, frankly, cannot be obtained through a conversation - no matter how lifelike you make it.
Spoken like someone who has never won a flame war.
Unfortuanely biometric scanning (including iris scanning) is much better at invading the privacy of the law-abiding then it is at confirming the identity of those who seek to defeat it.
Here is a VERY EASY way to fool an iris scanner.
Slashdot Mirror
How about "Width to Height" ratio?
Cheap players had little to do with the initial success of DVD.
I'll have to disagree with you there. I bought my very first DVD player, which I still use, for the lofty price of $35. At the time, I was the first person I know to have one. Blockbuster was only starting to carry some DVD copies of the newer movies they carried on VHS. It was big news when the cheap DVD players first hit the markets and there were runs on them at the stores that sold them. The day I picked mine up everyone else in the checkout line had one as well. That was clearly the point at which the format became popular.
You don't have to actively kill them. Just stop feeding them. Make the food supply for each cell of the grid dependant on that grid's power output. If they stop generating, they die of starvation. That'll teach 'em.
In fact it should even teach them to produce electricity as efficently as possible. Thus making them better over time, instead of worse.
They should do what my damn cell phone company does: Knock the hardware down to like $99, and make me pay a very affordable $9.95 a month. If I try to cancel before 2 years are up, hit me with some obscene early termination fee.
They have started doing exactly that. And it will ruin them! I gave my brother an old TiVo I had lying around and when he tried to register it he was informed that he had to agree to 1 year of service with a $150 "early termination" penalty.
So he built a Myth box instead.
Interesting idea. But why not just direct sunlight down from the top of the shaft to translucent panels in the elevator ceiling *without* using fibers? Cheaper and fewer points of failure.
The biggest problem with this awesome idea is the fact that the price tag will always be significant.
Uhm, have you seen the price of books? An engineering student can buy a pile of computers/PDAs for the price of a semester's worth of books.
Here is how criminals, the paranoid, and people who want to use their wife/boss/mother's account will do so.
I'm pretty sure all those "Police Fundraiser" calls are scams
Unfortuanely biometric scanning (including iris scanning) is much better at invading the privacy of the law-abiding then it is at confirming the identity of those who seek to defeat it. Here is a VERY EASY way to fool an iris scanner.
Say the name out loud and you'll see why it's a funny name for a Chineese PDA.
I've never understood why ad-supported content providers (particularly radio stations, and now, perhaps, Slashdot) always follow this model:
1) Start out providing good content and very few ads thus becoming popular.
2) Once popular, start playing - or inserting - many more ads, to the point of extreme annoyance.
3) Drive listeners - or readers - away and fade into oblivion.
Why can't these guys just charge MORE for the small number of ads? Why not auction them off to the highest bidder?