You might be able to argue that point if Walmart stores and walmart.com were run as separate entities and used a seperate trademark online. However, walmart.com has a store locator on the front page, and they include links for in store specials and new items being added to the store shelves this month. You can even return items bought online to a local B&M store. You can't possibly argue that walmart.com is not being used in some fashion (perhaps even just 10%) to advertise and direct people to the Walmart stores.
Sam's Club would be a distinction. Even though it's the same company, the advertisements are made under a differentiated brand.
From walmart.com: We strive to provide you with the lowest prices possible on Walmart.com as well as in our stores. But sometimes a price online does not match the price in a store. In our effort to be the lowest price provider in your geographic region, store pricing will sometimes differ from online prices.
They're basically saying 'Our online prices are always rock bottom, but if there's no competition in your area, then we're making you paying full MSRP, chump'.
It's shady when some stores *cough*OfficeMax*cough* list items at MSRP in store and give you the online price if you mention it. It's false advertising when they lure you into the store with fake pricing.
I stumbled onto the best way to get cashiers to check ID. I had an account that I maxxed out for an 18 month 0% deal. I wrote 'DO NOT USE!' on the front in sharpie to make sure I wouldn't accidently charge something and go over the limit. When the 0% was over and I paid off the balance, I started using the card. Almost everyone noticed it and asked that I show ID. A few people were a bit rude about it, but I just mention that I put it there because of lazy cashiers who don't bother to do their damn job, and it shuts them up quick.
It's a tradeoff. The chances of someone running up your card $10 at a time are much smaller, and most places that don't require signatures are videotaping you. If you dispute the charges, they can show the tape of you buying the items. Or if the card is stolen, they can hand your picture (and license place) to the cops to track you down.
Most CC thieves go on a spending spree at best buy or a department store. They're racing against the clock before the card is reported stolen, and they're not going to waste time at starbucks.
Assholes like you are the reason that so many stores are willing to take my stolen card until it finally comes back declined from the bank. If carrying a picture ID is too much hassle, just use cash.
And I'm more than happy to shop at stores that require ID. They get less chargebacks and pay a lower percentage to the bank, so they can charge me less for what I buy.
Why do spinners scream to me: "playing card in the spokes!"
They always remind me of pinwheels. Like the kind 4 year old girls (used to?) play with. The first time I saw spinning rims, I had to check for the rainbow sticker on the rear windshield.
It also doesn't break down the figures by dollar value. I'm sure that almost none of the $1-5 rebates get mailed in, but most of the $100+ rebates are claimed. If an item has one or two $2 rebates, I don't even consider them when deciding to purchase the product.
In larger markets, WalMart has their in-store pricing match their online pricing because they're undercutting local stores online and b&m. However, in rural areas where there's no Best Buy, CC or whatever to compete with, they charge the regular price in-store. If you ask the customer service people, they refuse to price match their own website advertised prices. You can go online to order it, but you can't get it in the store.
Example: Recently, some new DVD came out that would normally run at least $19.99. Best Buy and others were selling it at $15.99 to bring in customers. Walmart was selling it for $14.88 online and in stores near Best Buy. In Walmarts in the middle of nowhere, the price was the full $19.99. No price matching. I skipped going to Best Buy to pick it up because walmart.com said I could get it at Walmart for $14.88. By the time I was near a Best Buy again, the sale was over.
It's not even a case of old or mistyped pricing. They're actively selling at the price, just not in certain areas where they can get away with jamming up the customer. Most other places that charge less online will at least give you the lower price in the store if you ask.
which always seem to creep out of their time slot by a minute or so
The morons who schedule shows have been intentionally running them over by a minute to mess with PVRs. If they run a 7pm show for 61 minutes, you won't pick up their competitors' shows starting at 8pm. Only if your 7pm show is higher priority than the 8pm one, though.
I missed 3 episodes of Lost before noticing that another show was overlapping by the last minute and prioritized higher. So I downloaded the episodes commercial free. I hope the scheduling execs get a clue soon and quit being idiots. Or hopefully Tivo will update the boxes to go ahead and record whatever is left of the overlapping show if there's just a few minutes of overlap.
The whole idea of competing in specific time slots is horribly antiquated. Most cable stations replay their popular content later in the week, or just replay their prime time lineup later in the night. HBO has west coast feeds that are delayed 3 hours. ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX should have cable stations that run a 3 hour delay of their prime time content. There's no good reason why anyone should have to wait months to see an episode that gets a 10+ market share if they happend to miss the only airing.
People have been so ingrained with scheduling their lives around their TV that it's just part of life. Oooh, Survivor on Thursday, gotta be home. Ooh, American Idol is on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for the past three weeks...
Hehe, you poor people without PVRs are funny! You let rich hollywood executives tell you when you can leave your house. Or go to the bathroom.
You can easily find re-runs of ANY of the Trek series (- animated) nearly any time of day.
Not even close here in Kansas City. Enterprise is on Friday night (directly against SciFi's established friday lineup; UPN are assholes and morons) and rerun saturday. Spike TV shows Next Gen and DS9 during TIVO hours in the afternoon, but nobody shows Voyager at all here on cable or broadcast. The only way for me to catch Voyager is to head down to blockbuster.
Like MMX and SSE, this will benefit very few people for the first year or two. You'll only see the benefit if you beat the hell out of your machine with multiple apps at the same time and want smooth performance.
As the share of multi-core systems becomes dominant, developers will code and compile for the additional cores. Games stand to reap huge benefits; so do video encoding apps. Benchmarking current apps to find the improvement is futile. It's like benchmarking Doom 1 on a computer with a Radeon X800; the results are meaningless.
They are even disallowing you from linking to their home page without notifying them and agreeing to remove the link upon their demand. This means that even bookmarking their orbitz.com is a violation of the TOS (so is this sentance). Orbitz is one of their service marks, so mentioning them by name is a violation of their TOS. Orbitz is a bunch of dicks, so this sentence is also a violation of their TOS (do not present Orbitz in a false light). I definately don't plan to sign up for their site and agree to their T&C, so they're unenforceable on me.
Screw Orbitz.
Google should delete any entries in their database to www.vuitton.com or www.geico.com or any other a$$holes who want to whine about the paid advertisers. Why fight them in court when they have the biggest stick on the internet? Tell them they can pay the regular rate to appear at the top of the google ads if they want to show up at all.
Isn't this like asking how you can get easy access in the USA to 14-year-old pr0n or Al-Quaeda meeting sites? It's possible, I'm sure, but you're going to be buying a new front door sometime in your future.
Apple is finally getting somewhat serious about tapping the great unwashed windows user base. The only thing pricey about these components is the hard drive, but it probably only added $40 or so to the cost of the machine. Many first time pc buyers (or first pc in 5-10 years) have no preference between Win or Mac, but they decide pretty quickly when they see the minimum cost difference between the two. Apple's market share has always been small because their entry level pc has always been so much more expensive than the Windows side. I understand you can get a used g4 on ebay for about $350, but nearly all novice computer users refuse to buy a used machine. Especially one that won't come with any warranty or tech support, and may not include every manual or OS/software CD that was originally included.
I still think Apple's about $100-150 over where they should be for this product. It doesn't come with WiFi, and you have to supply the KVM. Adding an LCD and 802.11b/g (keyboard and mouse can be scrounged up) will probably set you back another $250+. I recently bought (on sale, but not an uncommon deal) a new Windows laptop with 802.11g, DVD/CDrw, 256MB, 60Gig, 15.4LCD, firewire, 3USB, Svideo, VGA out, 56k, 10/100lan, 1.4ghz, crappy 3D shipset for $650 (about $720 with tax). I added a $15 mouse I had laying around. Smaller, cheaper and a tighter package, the notebook goes anywhere at a seconds notice. The only way the MiniMac is a better deal is if you have a clear preference for the Mac OS and included software (superior native video editing, good luck with the 256MB ram).
Oh come on. Not many people have enough photos and MP3s to fill even 10GB nevermind 120GB or 160GB.
In the year since I bought my first digital camera, I've amassed a collection of over 5 gig of photos of just my daughter. I can easily see a larger family who goes on lots of trips having a 20gig collection of pictures. A decent *legit* MP3 collection can easily take up 10gig.
Most novice/casual users tend to never delete anything or uninstall programs, especially if they don't know what they're for. I'm sure a lot of people buy a new machine just because it's too much trouble to clean up the old one. The size of the hard drive is like a countdown to having to buy a new box because the old one is filled up.
[DirecTivo subscriber]
My impression has been that the TIVO boxes are rather poorly constructed. I've had intermitten color problems (screen goes to black and white) with all three of my DirecTivo units, and one completely died in the year since I first jumped onto the TIVO bandwagon. I've heard alot about overheating problems and modem issues from other users as well. I imagine if they're selling the boxes at a loss of over $100 each. The service plans run $80 at Best Buy, which is a dumb buy relative to the price of the box. So almost every unit that breaks down means that they eat a fat loss when the customer buys a replacement unit. The dumbest part is that the warranty is only 90 days labor, 1 year parts. The labor is by far the most expensive portion ($90 minimum, plus shipping costs each way), so the customer is disinclined to even try to get the unit repaired after the first 3 months.
It's not the comcast deal that kills them, it's the money spent on replacing shoddy equipment.
Even if you thought it was worth it to prevent your neighbors' wifi from interfering with yours, it's still stupid. You kill your cell phone reception, probably reduce your TV reception, and it's impractical to paint your ceilings, floors, windows, doors and fireplace. It's expensive to apply, and can't be removed easily, so when you go to sell nobody wants the property. For all the costs and effort, you can hire someone to wire ports into every room in your house. Or put repeaters in every room. Painting every surface of your home to get good wifi is asinine.
If I did work somewhere that was sensitive to electronic espionage, I'd have rooms built to spec with actual faraday cages and other countermeasures, not modified as an afterthought.
I object to the on-call people being in movie theatres. Go see the frickin' movie on the night when you're NOT on-call.
Some doctors are pretty much on call 24/365. If you're the only [FOO]ologist practicing within 200 miles, you take calls whenever someone has a question. I'm not talking about small towns in the middle of nowhere either. There are lots of subspecialties that only have one practicing doctor serving a population base of millions.
Not that they're the problem. It's the teenagers who thing they're some kind of socialite and can't wait an hour to find out who dumped or hooked up with who. Or even worse, the idiots who think that having a cell phone makes them part of the elite, and they spend every waking moment showing it off.
Theaters who really care would post notice that they kick out people with ringing cell phones. No refund. Then follow through.
That's a nice moral point of view, but it's not a fiscally viable one. If medical science found a way to cure every disease and malady for $500k a pop, then everyone would start sueing their medical provider to pay for whatever is going to kill them. People would run up tens of millions of dollars in medical bills before finally dieing in random car wrecks or getting murdered or hit by an asteriod at 150 years old.
Here in the USA we have a social program for able bodied seniors to retire from working. We pay our elderly not to work. Then we pay more to keep them alive longer... and not work. Usually when things really go bad, they run up hundreds of thousands of dollars just to live a few months longer. Three or four kids can go to college on the money that many americans use to extend their lives a few extra months.
When my grandfather's health finally started to degenerate (aside from nuisance problems like asthma, arthritis, hip problems), he ended up in the hospital facing perpetual health care costs of about $1000 per day to keep him alive... in the hospital. Once he ran out of money, he could have lived off the state's coffers for a year or two because it's difficult to kick him out once he starts treatment. My grandfather told them to take him home. Not because he didn't want to die in the hospital, but because he didn't want to leave my grandmother with nothing. You see, she needed the money more than he did, so he knew it was his time to die.
The problem with health care today is that everyone thinks they need the attention and money more than the other guy.
Laser eye surgery carries many risks that you don't think about when researching a doctor. Most people only worry about being left blind, and are comforted by very low risks in this regard. However, you can be left with very bad night vision, astigmatism, cloudyness or painful dryness. Going with the inexpensive eye surgery is a recipe for disaster. One should also factor in the high likelyhood of having to go back a second time for tweaking, since 20/40 to 20/60 is the more likely outcome for the procedure after teh first surgery. Also add in paying out of pockey for about five local followup exams afterwards. The eye surgery provider usually covers this in with the initial fee, but you're not going to travel to canada just for an eye checkup.
Going with the $10k heart surgery vs. dying is a good choice. Getting corrective eye surgery on the cheap because you don't want to wear glasses anymore is moronic.
Since those of you driving SUVs and talking while you are driving aren't paying much attention
Loud obnoxious motorcycle tailpipes were around waaaayy before SUVs and cell phones. Motorcycle riders often like to overtake traffic in the adjacent lane by 40+ mph (60 feet per second). Nobody should have to watch their rear view mirror for traffic 200 feet behind them to make sure they're not going to hit a speeder when they make a lane change to pass.
It's not a matter of auto drivers disregarding the riders, it's the riders disregarding their own life.
Hint: Anything with a jet engine on the back never cares about fuel efficiency, especially when it doesn't even fly.
Re:Decoupled disk storage, dumb terminals, HDTV
on
Ethernet at 10 Gbps
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· Score: 1
Heat generated by a typical desktop:
CPU: 60-110 satts
Memory: 5 watts/256MB
each HD: 10-20 watts
MOBO chipsets: 30+ watts
graphics: 20 watts (40-70 watts for 3d gaming)
audio: 5-10 watts
usb: up to 5 watts per port being used
+ about 50% for PSU inefficiency
Single point of failure means that there is only one machine to back up. Each terminal is identical, so it's easy to determine if the terminal is faulty by checking another terminal. Otherwise it's the server's problem. To fix a problem, you either debug the server from your own office, or go drop off a replacement terminal. Once you have a terminal that is capable of handling a screen at 1600x1200, you never need to upgrade that box. Just transfer the existing server to a new machine.
There are already free software solutions for this type of thing in small environments(VNC for example). More would quickly come out as the technology matures. Part of the reason that current thin clients are expensive is because they currently have to run applications locally. I'm talking more about dumb terminals, which are more like a networked data interface. Thin clients are also much smaller than standard desktops(slightly larger than my cable router), making their cost higher. The fact that they are produced in small quantities doesn't help any either. I would bet that if they were being produced at more than 10million per year, the cost would easily drop below $100 each (with mouse and keyboard), plus whatever the display costs. I got my 802.11b cable router (which runs linux and a web server) for $30. A dumb terminal isn't that much more complex.
As computers become more integrated into our daily lives, people are wanting more convienent access to their machines, rather than more of them. I may want to use my computer at work, in the office, den, kitchen, referigerator, bedroom, garage and back patio without having to drag the entire machine with me. Laptops don't really suit my needs very well because I like to upgrade frequently. With desktops, I have to install software on every machine, and they take up too much space.
Also bear in mind, that most people only use 5-20% of their computer's cpu power most of the time with spikes during things like loading a new application, opening a file, or 3d gaming. You can limit any single application to 70% of the cpu's time, and still have a very responsive experience for a few other users doing things like web surfing, word processing and listening to music. Dumb clients could be a very good alternative to individual PCs in a family with a few kids that are sick of having to wait their turn to use the computer.
Decoupled disk storage, dumb terminals, HDTV
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Ethernet at 10 Gbps
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· Score: 1
Instead of your site having 1-2 underutilized hard drives in every computer waiting to break down, you can consolidate everything into a single server. Less noise, heat and power usage. Much easier to deploy extra storage capacity for multiple users and back it all up.
You can set up dumb terminals capable of running any game that the server can handle by streaming the video and sound over the lan. Who cares how noisy the PC runs when it's down in the basement running your game of Far Cry that you're playing upstairs. Probably on par with watercooling your CPU, GPU and mobo chipset.
I would really like it if I could pick up a few diskless laptops with USB, a 15 inch screen, 64 MB ram and 400mhz(?) processor for $200 that would connect to a master desktop server. Drop them around the house to use as picture frames, TVs, music players, game machines, or web access. The only limit is the power of the master server that they all connect to.
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You might be able to argue that point if Walmart stores and walmart.com were run as separate entities and used a seperate trademark online. However, walmart.com has a store locator on the front page, and they include links for in store specials and new items being added to the store shelves this month. You can even return items bought online to a local B&M store. You can't possibly argue that walmart.com is not being used in some fashion (perhaps even just 10%) to advertise and direct people to the Walmart stores.
Sam's Club would be a distinction. Even though it's the same company, the advertisements are made under a differentiated brand.
From walmart.com: We strive to provide you with the lowest prices possible on Walmart.com as well as in our stores. But sometimes a price online does not match the price in a store. In our effort to be the lowest price provider in your geographic region, store pricing will sometimes differ from online prices.
They're basically saying 'Our online prices are always rock bottom, but if there's no competition in your area, then we're making you paying full MSRP, chump'.
It's shady when some stores *cough*OfficeMax*cough* list items at MSRP in store and give you the online price if you mention it. It's false advertising when they lure you into the store with fake pricing.
I stumbled onto the best way to get cashiers to check ID. I had an account that I maxxed out for an 18 month 0% deal. I wrote 'DO NOT USE!' on the front in sharpie to make sure I wouldn't accidently charge something and go over the limit. When the 0% was over and I paid off the balance, I started using the card. Almost everyone noticed it and asked that I show ID. A few people were a bit rude about it, but I just mention that I put it there because of lazy cashiers who don't bother to do their damn job, and it shuts them up quick.
It's a tradeoff. The chances of someone running up your card $10 at a time are much smaller, and most places that don't require signatures are videotaping you. If you dispute the charges, they can show the tape of you buying the items. Or if the card is stolen, they can hand your picture (and license place) to the cops to track you down.
Most CC thieves go on a spending spree at best buy or a department store. They're racing against the clock before the card is reported stolen, and they're not going to waste time at starbucks.
Assholes like you are the reason that so many stores are willing to take my stolen card until it finally comes back declined from the bank. If carrying a picture ID is too much hassle, just use cash.
And I'm more than happy to shop at stores that require ID. They get less chargebacks and pay a lower percentage to the bank, so they can charge me less for what I buy.
Why do spinners scream to me: "playing card in the spokes!"
They always remind me of pinwheels. Like the kind 4 year old girls (used to?) play with. The first time I saw spinning rims, I had to check for the rainbow sticker on the rear windshield.
It also doesn't break down the figures by dollar value. I'm sure that almost none of the $1-5 rebates get mailed in, but most of the $100+ rebates are claimed. If an item has one or two $2 rebates, I don't even consider them when deciding to purchase the product.
In larger markets, WalMart has their in-store pricing match their online pricing because they're undercutting local stores online and b&m. However, in rural areas where there's no Best Buy, CC or whatever to compete with, they charge the regular price in-store. If you ask the customer service people, they refuse to price match their own website advertised prices. You can go online to order it, but you can't get it in the store.
Example: Recently, some new DVD came out that would normally run at least $19.99. Best Buy and others were selling it at $15.99 to bring in customers. Walmart was selling it for $14.88 online and in stores near Best Buy. In Walmarts in the middle of nowhere, the price was the full $19.99. No price matching. I skipped going to Best Buy to pick it up because walmart.com said I could get it at Walmart for $14.88. By the time I was near a Best Buy again, the sale was over.
It's not even a case of old or mistyped pricing. They're actively selling at the price, just not in certain areas where they can get away with jamming up the customer. Most other places that charge less online will at least give you the lower price in the store if you ask.
which always seem to creep out of their time slot by a minute or so
The morons who schedule shows have been intentionally running them over by a minute to mess with PVRs. If they run a 7pm show for 61 minutes, you won't pick up their competitors' shows starting at 8pm. Only if your 7pm show is higher priority than the 8pm one, though. I missed 3 episodes of Lost before noticing that another show was overlapping by the last minute and prioritized higher. So I downloaded the episodes commercial free. I hope the scheduling execs get a clue soon and quit being idiots. Or hopefully Tivo will update the boxes to go ahead and record whatever is left of the overlapping show if there's just a few minutes of overlap.
The whole idea of competing in specific time slots is horribly antiquated. Most cable stations replay their popular content later in the week, or just replay their prime time lineup later in the night. HBO has west coast feeds that are delayed 3 hours. ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX should have cable stations that run a 3 hour delay of their prime time content. There's no good reason why anyone should have to wait months to see an episode that gets a 10+ market share if they happend to miss the only airing.
People have been so ingrained with scheduling their lives around their TV that it's just part of life. Oooh, Survivor on Thursday, gotta be home. Ooh, American Idol is on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for the past three weeks...
Hehe, you poor people without PVRs are funny! You let rich hollywood executives tell you when you can leave your house. Or go to the bathroom.
You can easily find re-runs of ANY of the Trek series (- animated) nearly any time of day.
Not even close here in Kansas City. Enterprise is on Friday night (directly against SciFi's established friday lineup; UPN are assholes and morons) and rerun saturday. Spike TV shows Next Gen and DS9 during TIVO hours in the afternoon, but nobody shows Voyager at all here on cable or broadcast. The only way for me to catch Voyager is to head down to blockbuster.
Like MMX and SSE, this will benefit very few people for the first year or two. You'll only see the benefit if you beat the hell out of your machine with multiple apps at the same time and want smooth performance.
As the share of multi-core systems becomes dominant, developers will code and compile for the additional cores. Games stand to reap huge benefits; so do video encoding apps. Benchmarking current apps to find the improvement is futile. It's like benchmarking Doom 1 on a computer with a Radeon X800; the results are meaningless.
They are even disallowing you from linking to their home page without notifying them and agreeing to remove the link upon their demand. This means that even bookmarking their orbitz.com is a violation of the TOS (so is this sentance). Orbitz is one of their service marks, so mentioning them by name is a violation of their TOS. Orbitz is a bunch of dicks, so this sentence is also a violation of their TOS (do not present Orbitz in a false light). I definately don't plan to sign up for their site and agree to their T&C, so they're unenforceable on me.
Screw Orbitz.
Google should delete any entries in their database to www.vuitton.com or www.geico.com or any other a$$holes who want to whine about the paid advertisers. Why fight them in court when they have the biggest stick on the internet? Tell them they can pay the regular rate to appear at the top of the google ads if they want to show up at all.
Isn't this like asking how you can get easy access in the USA to 14-year-old pr0n or Al-Quaeda meeting sites? It's possible, I'm sure, but you're going to be buying a new front door sometime in your future.
Apple is finally getting somewhat serious about tapping the great unwashed windows user base. The only thing pricey about these components is the hard drive, but it probably only added $40 or so to the cost of the machine. Many first time pc buyers (or first pc in 5-10 years) have no preference between Win or Mac, but they decide pretty quickly when they see the minimum cost difference between the two. Apple's market share has always been small because their entry level pc has always been so much more expensive than the Windows side. I understand you can get a used g4 on ebay for about $350, but nearly all novice computer users refuse to buy a used machine. Especially one that won't come with any warranty or tech support, and may not include every manual or OS/software CD that was originally included.
I still think Apple's about $100-150 over where they should be for this product. It doesn't come with WiFi, and you have to supply the KVM. Adding an LCD and 802.11b/g (keyboard and mouse can be scrounged up) will probably set you back another $250+. I recently bought (on sale, but not an uncommon deal) a new Windows laptop with 802.11g, DVD/CDrw, 256MB, 60Gig, 15.4LCD, firewire, 3USB, Svideo, VGA out, 56k, 10/100lan, 1.4ghz, crappy 3D shipset for $650 (about $720 with tax). I added a $15 mouse I had laying around. Smaller, cheaper and a tighter package, the notebook goes anywhere at a seconds notice. The only way the MiniMac is a better deal is if you have a clear preference for the Mac OS and included software (superior native video editing, good luck with the 256MB ram).
Oh come on. Not many people have enough photos and MP3s to fill even 10GB nevermind 120GB or 160GB.
In the year since I bought my first digital camera, I've amassed a collection of over 5 gig of photos of just my daughter. I can easily see a larger family who goes on lots of trips having a 20gig collection of pictures. A decent *legit* MP3 collection can easily take up 10gig.
Most novice/casual users tend to never delete anything or uninstall programs, especially if they don't know what they're for. I'm sure a lot of people buy a new machine just because it's too much trouble to clean up the old one. The size of the hard drive is like a countdown to having to buy a new box because the old one is filled up.
[DirecTivo subscriber]
My impression has been that the TIVO boxes are rather poorly constructed. I've had intermitten color problems (screen goes to black and white) with all three of my DirecTivo units, and one completely died in the year since I first jumped onto the TIVO bandwagon. I've heard alot about overheating problems and modem issues from other users as well. I imagine if they're selling the boxes at a loss of over $100 each. The service plans run $80 at Best Buy, which is a dumb buy relative to the price of the box. So almost every unit that breaks down means that they eat a fat loss when the customer buys a replacement unit. The dumbest part is that the warranty is only 90 days labor, 1 year parts. The labor is by far the most expensive portion ($90 minimum, plus shipping costs each way), so the customer is disinclined to even try to get the unit repaired after the first 3 months.
It's not the comcast deal that kills them, it's the money spent on replacing shoddy equipment.
Even if you thought it was worth it to prevent your neighbors' wifi from interfering with yours, it's still stupid. You kill your cell phone reception, probably reduce your TV reception, and it's impractical to paint your ceilings, floors, windows, doors and fireplace. It's expensive to apply, and can't be removed easily, so when you go to sell nobody wants the property. For all the costs and effort, you can hire someone to wire ports into every room in your house. Or put repeaters in every room. Painting every surface of your home to get good wifi is asinine.
If I did work somewhere that was sensitive to electronic espionage, I'd have rooms built to spec with actual faraday cages and other countermeasures, not modified as an afterthought.
I object to the on-call people being in movie theatres. Go see the frickin' movie on the night when you're NOT on-call.
Some doctors are pretty much on call 24/365. If you're the only [FOO]ologist practicing within 200 miles, you take calls whenever someone has a question. I'm not talking about small towns in the middle of nowhere either. There are lots of subspecialties that only have one practicing doctor serving a population base of millions.
Not that they're the problem. It's the teenagers who thing they're some kind of socialite and can't wait an hour to find out who dumped or hooked up with who. Or even worse, the idiots who think that having a cell phone makes them part of the elite, and they spend every waking moment showing it off.
Theaters who really care would post notice that they kick out people with ringing cell phones. No refund. Then follow through.
That's a nice moral point of view, but it's not a fiscally viable one. If medical science found a way to cure every disease and malady for $500k a pop, then everyone would start sueing their medical provider to pay for whatever is going to kill them. People would run up tens of millions of dollars in medical bills before finally dieing in random car wrecks or getting murdered or hit by an asteriod at 150 years old.
Here in the USA we have a social program for able bodied seniors to retire from working. We pay our elderly not to work. Then we pay more to keep them alive longer... and not work. Usually when things really go bad, they run up hundreds of thousands of dollars just to live a few months longer. Three or four kids can go to college on the money that many americans use to extend their lives a few extra months.
When my grandfather's health finally started to degenerate (aside from nuisance problems like asthma, arthritis, hip problems), he ended up in the hospital facing perpetual health care costs of about $1000 per day to keep him alive... in the hospital. Once he ran out of money, he could have lived off the state's coffers for a year or two because it's difficult to kick him out once he starts treatment. My grandfather told them to take him home. Not because he didn't want to die in the hospital, but because he didn't want to leave my grandmother with nothing. You see, she needed the money more than he did, so he knew it was his time to die.
The problem with health care today is that everyone thinks they need the attention and money more than the other guy.
Laser eye surgery carries many risks that you don't think about when researching a doctor. Most people only worry about being left blind, and are comforted by very low risks in this regard. However, you can be left with very bad night vision, astigmatism, cloudyness or painful dryness. Going with the inexpensive eye surgery is a recipe for disaster. One should also factor in the high likelyhood of having to go back a second time for tweaking, since 20/40 to 20/60 is the more likely outcome for the procedure after teh first surgery. Also add in paying out of pockey for about five local followup exams afterwards. The eye surgery provider usually covers this in with the initial fee, but you're not going to travel to canada just for an eye checkup.
Going with the $10k heart surgery vs. dying is a good choice. Getting corrective eye surgery on the cheap because you don't want to wear glasses anymore is moronic.
Since those of you driving SUVs and talking while you are driving aren't paying much attention
Loud obnoxious motorcycle tailpipes were around waaaayy before SUVs and cell phones. Motorcycle riders often like to overtake traffic in the adjacent lane by 40+ mph (60 feet per second). Nobody should have to watch their rear view mirror for traffic 200 feet behind them to make sure they're not going to hit a speeder when they make a lane change to pass.
It's not a matter of auto drivers disregarding the riders, it's the riders disregarding their own life.
Hint: Anything with a jet engine on the back never cares about fuel efficiency, especially when it doesn't even fly.
Heat generated by a typical desktop:
CPU: 60-110 satts
Memory: 5 watts/256MB
each HD: 10-20 watts
MOBO chipsets: 30+ watts
graphics: 20 watts (40-70 watts for 3d gaming)
audio: 5-10 watts
usb: up to 5 watts per port being used
+ about 50% for PSU inefficiency
Single point of failure means that there is only one machine to back up. Each terminal is identical, so it's easy to determine if the terminal is faulty by checking another terminal. Otherwise it's the server's problem. To fix a problem, you either debug the server from your own office, or go drop off a replacement terminal. Once you have a terminal that is capable of handling a screen at 1600x1200, you never need to upgrade that box. Just transfer the existing server to a new machine.
There are already free software solutions for this type of thing in small environments(VNC for example). More would quickly come out as the technology matures. Part of the reason that current thin clients are expensive is because they currently have to run applications locally. I'm talking more about dumb terminals, which are more like a networked data interface. Thin clients are also much smaller than standard desktops(slightly larger than my cable router), making their cost higher. The fact that they are produced in small quantities doesn't help any either. I would bet that if they were being produced at more than 10million per year, the cost would easily drop below $100 each (with mouse and keyboard), plus whatever the display costs. I got my 802.11b cable router (which runs linux and a web server) for $30. A dumb terminal isn't that much more complex.
As computers become more integrated into our daily lives, people are wanting more convienent access to their machines, rather than more of them. I may want to use my computer at work, in the office, den, kitchen, referigerator, bedroom, garage and back patio without having to drag the entire machine with me. Laptops don't really suit my needs very well because I like to upgrade frequently. With desktops, I have to install software on every machine, and they take up too much space.
Also bear in mind, that most people only use 5-20% of their computer's cpu power most of the time with spikes during things like loading a new application, opening a file, or 3d gaming. You can limit any single application to 70% of the cpu's time, and still have a very responsive experience for a few other users doing things like web surfing, word processing and listening to music. Dumb clients could be a very good alternative to individual PCs in a family with a few kids that are sick of having to wait their turn to use the computer.
Instead of your site having 1-2 underutilized hard drives in every computer waiting to break down, you can consolidate everything into a single server. Less noise, heat and power usage. Much easier to deploy extra storage capacity for multiple users and back it all up.
You can set up dumb terminals capable of running any game that the server can handle by streaming the video and sound over the lan. Who cares how noisy the PC runs when it's down in the basement running your game of Far Cry that you're playing upstairs. Probably on par with watercooling your CPU, GPU and mobo chipset.
I would really like it if I could pick up a few diskless laptops with USB, a 15 inch screen, 64 MB ram and 400mhz(?) processor for $200 that would connect to a master desktop server. Drop them around the house to use as picture frames, TVs, music players, game machines, or web access. The only limit is the power of the master server that they all connect to.
Distribute HDTV video around the house.