In *some* situations, true. In most situations, this is unfortunately untrue. I live in Sheffield. I have a disabled rail card. I have a diesel Astra that gets 80mpg. Taking the tram that's right in front of my door, straight to the station, then train to Bristol, then parents pick me up to go to their house. Total time, 4 hours one way, cost £60 return including disabled discount brought in advance.
Use my own car, £18 return, 3 hours one way door to door. Including traffic. Driving at 60mph. Go figure!
I used to use the train sometimes but since buying my Astra, I now never use the train. Funny, I buy a green car in an attempt to reduce my CO2 footprint, and it just serves to actually *increase* my CO2 footprint! However, my Astra emits 119g/km so with 5 people in my car, that's £4 each person by car, and emits less CO2 than the train, and train costs a whopping £300!
As a Brit, I am shocked and appalled at the situation in the US. Hearing aids never worked for me and I was forced to wear them until I was 13 - cost wasn't an issue. I see so much hearing aid abuse - I've seen them flushed down toilets, dunked in coke, stomped on - and I never gave that a second thought. Very few people took proper care of them as they knew that if it got broken, they'd get free replacements. Now after reading your post and looking back, I'm ashamed of what I saw. I never abused my aids, but never took good care of them. Yes, fair enough that hearing aids were forced on those people who abused them and they really did not want them, but still. Us deafies are pretty fortunate in the UK for getting free hearing aids, upgrades, care, etc, no matter what our socioeconomic status is, aren't we!
You use a hearing aid that amplifies sound to 90dB and you call yourself stone deaf? I call you "slightly deaf". I used to have hearing aids that amplified sounds to 142dB and I couldn't hear a single sound, not even when I was standing right next to a pneumatic drill with both my aids turned up to max. I never knew when the batteries ran out and I got yelled by my teachers constantly for not changing the batteries. I called my hearing aids "expensive ear decorations". Now that is stone deaf!
I obviously no longer wear them and I now use something different that actually works for me.
I watch the BBC. But I don't subscribe to it. I don't have a TV. I don't watch the live streams. I use BBC News' website and iPlayer (non-live streams only) quite often. I've been licence free for a year now, and had *no* hassle whatsoever since I asked for a refund.
Of course now I've said that, I'll be waterboarded by a couple shady guys from the BBC tomorrow.
I agree with you completely. I'm a tall guy, and my parent's '95 Mondeo's ignition barrel has an really stupid design - it's right in front of my knee, so I sometimes accidentally knock it into "I", turning off the engine. I first found out this "feature" while doing 80mph on the motorway. The other stupid design is that you can't turn it into "III" unless you completely turn it back to "0" (steering lock) then back to "III". I found out this feature at the same time. Luckily, I just immediately depressed the clutch to stop engine braking, figured all this out, restarted the engine and continued.
My point is that most existing cars immediately stop the engine when you turn off the ignition - and it's not a dangerous thing to do. Why do push-button ignition require the 3 second check? "I bumped the button" - so what? Better that than panicking when trying to turn off the ignition when the engine is racing!
After reading what you wrote, I now really dislike the idea of electronic ignition switches, gearboxes and brakes, and I no longer believe I would drive a car without a hardware kill switch. Sure, my car might be drive-by-wire, but the "ignition"[1] barrel, brakes and manual gearbox are still 100% mechanical with nothing electronic anywhere - my car don't even have ABS - apart from the "brake & clutch fluid low" sensor and that's it. I don't mind the fact that the engine has bazillions of sensors & computers, but mechanical brakes and gearboxes work fantastic, and there's no reason to have an electronic version of those. I used to drive a Smart car with an semi-auto gearbox (actually a fully mechanical gearbox & clutch actuated by servomotors controlled by a computer) for 6 months for work and didn't think twice of it. Now after what you said, and looking back, I am cringing a little right now! At least, the Smart car I drove did have an mechanical ignition switch, so if anything did go wrong, I can just turn off the ignition. At the very least, I would still like to have that option along with a mechanical brake, as a minimum.
[1]Quotes around "ignition" because my car's a diesel. I don't know the proper name for that switch;)
Modern cars nowadays use drive-by-wire, especially the Toyotas, so that issue doesn't apply. In the past with mechanical throttles, there's a cable from the pedal to the throttle, and cruise control is essentially a servo pulling on the cable, which is why the pedal moves. Nowadays with the drive-by-wire system, the pedal doesn't move. My cheap-as-chips '01 GM car has drive-by-wire accelerator as it's a diesel (diesels doesn't have a throttle, so no point in having a cable - the fuel metering is completely done by a computer) - however it didn't come with cruise control. I brought a cheap aftermarket kit which plugged directly in the accelerator, and then just needed 5 wires soldering in the electrics (live, neutral, speed, clutch switch & brake switch) and it worked brilliantly. When I set the speed and release the accelerator, the pedal pops back up - and it doesn't move when I change the speed using the CC stalk. I've driven other drive-by-wire cars with OEM CC and they all are the same. So it can't be a cruise control issue. I have driven cars with a mechanical throttle with CC and the pedal does move and the CC totally sucks, but mechanical throttles are a rarity nowadays even on cheap cars.
Don't know about that.... there was this Vauxhall Calibra used to be one of the most aerodynamic cars in the UK with a Cd of 0.26 and not a bad looking one too, to boot - after all, it was marketed as a sports car in the 80's. The Vauxhall Astra gets 0.31 Cd, however, Vauxhall made a modified version of the Astra which gets a Cd of 0.28, which I have (gets 80MPGuk/67MPGus). Yes, it's not brilliant looking, considering that it's a 90s car, but the Astra is the 2nd most common car in the UK after the Ford Focus, and if a cheap company like Vauxhall achieves a Cd of 0.28 on an common-as-muck car without any obvious changes, that's pretty impressive in my book, and entirely do-able. Also keep in mind, GM also achieved 0.195 with the EV1.
<pedantic> Car companies using engines from different car companies are very common, for example, some diesel Civics has Isuzu engines from GM/Opel, and in return, GM/Opel gets a V6 engine from Honda. </pedantic>
In the UK, we've got different classes of licences as well. See here for classes of vehicles in the UK. (As an aside, it can be most annoying - for example, anyone who passes their driving test before 1st Jan 1997 gets Class C1 on their licence automatically, and those who passes on or after 1st Jan 1997 must take a test to get Class C1. I passed my test in August 1997 so I keep having to ask my Dad to drive Class C1 vehicles for me every time I move house)
Also, licence plates for vehicles in the UK is linked to the car, not the driver. When a car is sold in the UK, it's assigned a licence plate which stays with the car until it's crushed, then the licence plate is never re-used (unless brought by a rich person decades in the future). For example, my first car had "F564 SLO" (now crushed), my second car had "K380 AUR" and so on - the registration year and location is stored in the plate too, so it wouldn't make sense to move plates. So, nice idea, shame it won't work in the UK.
But like someone else said, if someone is caught drink driving, they lose their licence. Simple.
Strange, as in the UK, all mobile providers have "unlimited" mobile broadband. I'm with T-Mobile and pay £7.50 a month for "unlimited" mobile broadband, with a 1GB fair use policy. I'm not going to exceed 1GB on a mobile phone!
Hence I use Witch - it gives me a choice between window switching, or application switching. I set alt+tab as window switching and cmd+tab (default OS function) as application switching. Works lovely.
One of the rules of direct debit is that the company making the withdrawl *has* to tell the account holder the amount they're taking out 2 weeks beforehand (unless it's completely fixed). I once had an instruction sent to me way higher than what was supposed to be, I immediately phoned the bank and they cancelled the direct debit and I phoned the company and they sorted the error. From 13 years of using direct debit for several things (I usually have up to 15 direct debits set up), that was the only problem I had. Of course, now I've said that, all 15 direct debits will now take £1,000 each out of my account tomorrow...:)
I'm surprised the States didn't have something like Direct Debit, we've had DD for a long while now. Why is this? (I get the feeling I'll know what the responses will be...)
My microwave does what you say:) It has a nice big knob, and 3 buttons. If I want to cook something at full power, I don't need to press the power button - I just twist the knob until the digital display show the time I want - the faster I spin the knob, the faster the digits goes up - then press start. It's good because I've got the microwave for so long, I now know exactly how much to twist the knob to get what time I want. If I want lower power, I just press the power button until I get the desired percentage, then twist the knob to get the time and press start. Same for "defrost" but I can choose between time or weight. It apparently has auto cook but I've never used it. Best digital microwave I've ever used if you ask me.
Very similar to this one but not a convector microwave, and has much less buttons.
Do they have a website or something? Or is it possible to find dimmable CFL's online? I'm deaf, so I've wired up my house lights so they'd flash on sounds such as doorbells, telephone, etc. I've put in a couple dimmers so no-one would be disoriented from full-on to full-off in the night, but this means I can't have CFL's, and dimmable CFLs are impossible to get in the UK (I spent days looking for them), and I'm desperate to get my hands on them.
I wouldn't say modern fridges are designed to fail within 6 years, my Zanussi fridge/freezer was made in 1993 and is nearly 14 years old, but it's still working fine even tho it's cheap and low end, and have annoying things like if you put food right at the back of the fridge it will be frozen solid. (But really, I can't complain, I got it for free). I expect my fridge to last for at least 20 years. My parents old Bosch fridge/freezer was made before I was born (1980) and still works fine now. My point is that fridge/freezers are bascially very simple consiting of a motor, pipes, some gas and lots of insulation, and maybe a controlling microprocessor and that's all. Not a lot of things to break down.
I do know of 2 fridge/freezers that broke before long but that was only because the owner of those attacked the freezer with a metal knife trying to break up the ice resulting in a "pwssshh" of gas escape. Otherwise, I don't know anyone that had to buy a fridge/freezers due to their old unit breaking down - only because they've moved house and the new house didn't have one, or that they've broken it by stabbing it with a knife, not because the old one has failed... yet.
I've got the TomTom Go 300 and a sample of its 3D view is available here and in night mode here- sure it doesn't include wireframe buildings like the one you saw (which would be cool) but for £300 ($500) I can't complain. The GPS device you saw also probably only have buildings for Tokyo only - anything outside Tokyo wouldn't have it probably.
Eh? I have a PowerMac G3 350MHz and OS X 10.4.5 works perfectly fine on that, acutally runs pretty quickly surprisingly considering its CPU speed, and OS X 10.4 will work fine on even older PowerMacs!
Sure it won't run on stuff like LC475's but cmon, even Apple has to draw the line somewhere.
Is it possible to choose what to transfer, and what not to transfer? And is it only available via firewire or is there other connectivity methods possible? Cheers!
What about sign language?:) I can sign for hours on end and I don't get tired arms/shoulders/whatevers, though a few interpreters gets RSI from signing for too much.
He didn't say every manager is a good one, he said every *good* manager knows that employees need some time to themeslves - which he means those managers that are good knows that employees need some time to themselves - i.e. managers that doesn't know that (like yours) are NOT good managers. Good managers are rare, but they do exist and they do know that employees need time to themselves. Working in the big bad world for the first time ever, I was told "There's a break at 11 in the coffee room, and lunch is usually at 1 to 2 but up to you really". After a few weeks, I asked if there were an official break in the afternoon, my manager said "Eh, take breaks whenever you want" - and eventually I found out that I can start work whenever I want, go home whenever I want, take as much breaks I want doing anything I want (respecting the IT policy of course, such as not surfing porn etc) but as long as I get the work done. It's generally expected that I come in every working day though, at a reasonable time. If I don't do my work, I get warned, then eventually fired. I won't get fired for slacking off. Shame the manager quit after 3 months and his manager hasn't replaced him (that was 3 years ago) and he's micromanaging to the extreme - tho the policies stays in place.
I remember watching a technology program on TV (Tomorrow's World?) several years ago and they showed a gizmo on wheels that mounted under the police car at the front, on a small ramp, with 2 metal foil triangles folded down and away safely. And when the police car was behind the car the police car was chasing, the policeman pressed a button and the gizmo fired something like a rocket motor and launched itself off the ramp and on the road, the 2 metal foil triangles popped up - one each end of the gizmo (front and back) and the gizmo went under the car in front and zapped the car with a high voltage current and destroyed the electronics of the car and brought it to a halt. As the gizmo on TV was a prototype, it didn't work. I've never heard about it since, so it probably didn't work out in the end, but it did exist before, so you can't claim prior art;)
Have tried and googled for a solution but couldn't find it. Sorry!
It's interesting really, I've heard a *lot* about rebates from the US, but I've never ever seen *anything* like rebates here in the UK - the prices you see is what you pay, you don't have to claim a portion back. To be honest, the rebate idea all sounds insane - giving the shop more money than the product is worth and getting it back later on. Right.
Anyway. Why is the rebate system rampant in the US (I think so anyway) while it doesn't exist at all in the UK?
The CMOS battery hasn't been rechargeable since the 486 era - they now use lithium button cells nowadays which isn't rechargeable. So no charger in the computer.
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In *some* situations, true. In most situations, this is unfortunately untrue. I live in Sheffield. I have a disabled rail card. I have a diesel Astra that gets 80mpg. Taking the tram that's right in front of my door, straight to the station, then train to Bristol, then parents pick me up to go to their house. Total time, 4 hours one way, cost £60 return including disabled discount brought in advance.
Use my own car, £18 return, 3 hours one way door to door. Including traffic. Driving at 60mph. Go figure!
I used to use the train sometimes but since buying my Astra, I now never use the train. Funny, I buy a green car in an attempt to reduce my CO2 footprint, and it just serves to actually *increase* my CO2 footprint! However, my Astra emits 119g/km so with 5 people in my car, that's £4 each person by car, and emits less CO2 than the train, and train costs a whopping £300!
As a Brit, I am shocked and appalled at the situation in the US. Hearing aids never worked for me and I was forced to wear them until I was 13 - cost wasn't an issue. I see so much hearing aid abuse - I've seen them flushed down toilets, dunked in coke, stomped on - and I never gave that a second thought. Very few people took proper care of them as they knew that if it got broken, they'd get free replacements. Now after reading your post and looking back, I'm ashamed of what I saw. I never abused my aids, but never took good care of them. Yes, fair enough that hearing aids were forced on those people who abused them and they really did not want them, but still. Us deafies are pretty fortunate in the UK for getting free hearing aids, upgrades, care, etc, no matter what our socioeconomic status is, aren't we!
You use a hearing aid that amplifies sound to 90dB and you call yourself stone deaf? I call you "slightly deaf". I used to have hearing aids that amplified sounds to 142dB and I couldn't hear a single sound, not even when I was standing right next to a pneumatic drill with both my aids turned up to max. I never knew when the batteries ran out and I got yelled by my teachers constantly for not changing the batteries. I called my hearing aids "expensive ear decorations". Now that is stone deaf!
I obviously no longer wear them and I now use something different that actually works for me.
I watch the BBC. But I don't subscribe to it. I don't have a TV. I don't watch the live streams. I use BBC News' website and iPlayer (non-live streams only) quite often. I've been licence free for a year now, and had *no* hassle whatsoever since I asked for a refund.
Of course now I've said that, I'll be waterboarded by a couple shady guys from the BBC tomorrow.
I agree with you completely. I'm a tall guy, and my parent's '95 Mondeo's ignition barrel has an really stupid design - it's right in front of my knee, so I sometimes accidentally knock it into "I", turning off the engine. I first found out this "feature" while doing 80mph on the motorway. The other stupid design is that you can't turn it into "III" unless you completely turn it back to "0" (steering lock) then back to "III". I found out this feature at the same time. Luckily, I just immediately depressed the clutch to stop engine braking, figured all this out, restarted the engine and continued.
My point is that most existing cars immediately stop the engine when you turn off the ignition - and it's not a dangerous thing to do. Why do push-button ignition require the 3 second check? "I bumped the button" - so what? Better that than panicking when trying to turn off the ignition when the engine is racing!
After reading what you wrote, I now really dislike the idea of electronic ignition switches, gearboxes and brakes, and I no longer believe I would drive a car without a hardware kill switch. Sure, my car might be drive-by-wire, but the "ignition"[1] barrel, brakes and manual gearbox are still 100% mechanical with nothing electronic anywhere - my car don't even have ABS - apart from the "brake & clutch fluid low" sensor and that's it. I don't mind the fact that the engine has bazillions of sensors & computers, but mechanical brakes and gearboxes work fantastic, and there's no reason to have an electronic version of those. I used to drive a Smart car with an semi-auto gearbox (actually a fully mechanical gearbox & clutch actuated by servomotors controlled by a computer) for 6 months for work and didn't think twice of it. Now after what you said, and looking back, I am cringing a little right now! At least, the Smart car I drove did have an mechanical ignition switch, so if anything did go wrong, I can just turn off the ignition. At the very least, I would still like to have that option along with a mechanical brake, as a minimum.
[1]Quotes around "ignition" because my car's a diesel. I don't know the proper name for that switch ;)
Modern cars nowadays use drive-by-wire, especially the Toyotas, so that issue doesn't apply. In the past with mechanical throttles, there's a cable from the pedal to the throttle, and cruise control is essentially a servo pulling on the cable, which is why the pedal moves. Nowadays with the drive-by-wire system, the pedal doesn't move. My cheap-as-chips '01 GM car has drive-by-wire accelerator as it's a diesel (diesels doesn't have a throttle, so no point in having a cable - the fuel metering is completely done by a computer) - however it didn't come with cruise control. I brought a cheap aftermarket kit which plugged directly in the accelerator, and then just needed 5 wires soldering in the electrics (live, neutral, speed, clutch switch & brake switch) and it worked brilliantly. When I set the speed and release the accelerator, the pedal pops back up - and it doesn't move when I change the speed using the CC stalk. I've driven other drive-by-wire cars with OEM CC and they all are the same. So it can't be a cruise control issue. I have driven cars with a mechanical throttle with CC and the pedal does move and the CC totally sucks, but mechanical throttles are a rarity nowadays even on cheap cars.
Don't know about that.... there was this Vauxhall Calibra used to be one of the most aerodynamic cars in the UK with a Cd of 0.26 and not a bad looking one too, to boot - after all, it was marketed as a sports car in the 80's. The Vauxhall Astra gets 0.31 Cd, however, Vauxhall made a modified version of the Astra which gets a Cd of 0.28, which I have (gets 80MPGuk/67MPGus). Yes, it's not brilliant looking, considering that it's a 90s car, but the Astra is the 2nd most common car in the UK after the Ford Focus, and if a cheap company like Vauxhall achieves a Cd of 0.28 on an common-as-muck car without any obvious changes, that's pretty impressive in my book, and entirely do-able. Also keep in mind, GM also achieved 0.195 with the EV1.
<pedantic> Car companies using engines from different car companies are very common, for example, some diesel Civics has Isuzu engines from GM/Opel, and in return, GM/Opel gets a V6 engine from Honda. </pedantic>
In the UK, we've got different classes of licences as well. See here for classes of vehicles in the UK. (As an aside, it can be most annoying - for example, anyone who passes their driving test before 1st Jan 1997 gets Class C1 on their licence automatically, and those who passes on or after 1st Jan 1997 must take a test to get Class C1. I passed my test in August 1997 so I keep having to ask my Dad to drive Class C1 vehicles for me every time I move house)
Also, licence plates for vehicles in the UK is linked to the car, not the driver. When a car is sold in the UK, it's assigned a licence plate which stays with the car until it's crushed, then the licence plate is never re-used (unless brought by a rich person decades in the future). For example, my first car had "F564 SLO" (now crushed), my second car had "K380 AUR" and so on - the registration year and location is stored in the plate too, so it wouldn't make sense to move plates. So, nice idea, shame it won't work in the UK.
But like someone else said, if someone is caught drink driving, they lose their licence. Simple.
Strange, as in the UK, all mobile providers have "unlimited" mobile broadband. I'm with T-Mobile and pay £7.50 a month for "unlimited" mobile broadband, with a 1GB fair use policy. I'm not going to exceed 1GB on a mobile phone!
Hence I use Witch - it gives me a choice between window switching, or application switching. I set alt+tab as window switching and cmd+tab (default OS function) as application switching. Works lovely.
http://www.manytricks.com/witch/
One of the rules of direct debit is that the company making the withdrawl *has* to tell the account holder the amount they're taking out 2 weeks beforehand (unless it's completely fixed). I once had an instruction sent to me way higher than what was supposed to be, I immediately phoned the bank and they cancelled the direct debit and I phoned the company and they sorted the error. From 13 years of using direct debit for several things (I usually have up to 15 direct debits set up), that was the only problem I had. Of course, now I've said that, all 15 direct debits will now take £1,000 each out of my account tomorrow... :)
I'm surprised the States didn't have something like Direct Debit, we've had DD for a long while now. Why is this? (I get the feeling I'll know what the responses will be...)
My microwave does what you say :) It has a nice big knob, and 3 buttons. If I want to cook something at full power, I don't need to press the power button - I just twist the knob until the digital display show the time I want - the faster I spin the knob, the faster the digits goes up - then press start. It's good because I've got the microwave for so long, I now know exactly how much to twist the knob to get what time I want. If I want lower power, I just press the power button until I get the desired percentage, then twist the knob to get the time and press start. Same for "defrost" but I can choose between time or weight. It apparently has auto cook but I've never used it. Best digital microwave I've ever used if you ask me.
Very similar to this one but not a convector microwave, and has much less buttons.
Do they have a website or something? Or is it possible to find dimmable CFL's online? I'm deaf, so I've wired up my house lights so they'd flash on sounds such as doorbells, telephone, etc. I've put in a couple dimmers so no-one would be disoriented from full-on to full-off in the night, but this means I can't have CFL's, and dimmable CFLs are impossible to get in the UK (I spent days looking for them), and I'm desperate to get my hands on them.
I wouldn't say modern fridges are designed to fail within 6 years, my Zanussi fridge/freezer was made in 1993 and is nearly 14 years old, but it's still working fine even tho it's cheap and low end, and have annoying things like if you put food right at the back of the fridge it will be frozen solid. (But really, I can't complain, I got it for free). I expect my fridge to last for at least 20 years. My parents old Bosch fridge/freezer was made before I was born (1980) and still works fine now. My point is that fridge/freezers are bascially very simple consiting of a motor, pipes, some gas and lots of insulation, and maybe a controlling microprocessor and that's all. Not a lot of things to break down.
I do know of 2 fridge/freezers that broke before long but that was only because the owner of those attacked the freezer with a metal knife trying to break up the ice resulting in a "pwssshh" of gas escape. Otherwise, I don't know anyone that had to buy a fridge/freezers due to their old unit breaking down - only because they've moved house and the new house didn't have one, or that they've broken it by stabbing it with a knife, not because the old one has failed... yet.
I've got the TomTom Go 300 and a sample of its 3D view is available here and in night mode here- sure it doesn't include wireframe buildings like the one you saw (which would be cool) but for £300 ($500) I can't complain. The GPS device you saw also probably only have buildings for Tokyo only - anything outside Tokyo wouldn't have it probably.
Eh? I have a PowerMac G3 350MHz and OS X 10.4.5 works perfectly fine on that, acutally runs pretty quickly surprisingly considering its CPU speed, and OS X 10.4 will work fine on even older PowerMacs!
Sure it won't run on stuff like LC475's but cmon, even Apple has to draw the line somewhere.
Is it possible to choose what to transfer, and what not to transfer? And is it only available via firewire or is there other connectivity methods possible? Cheers!
What about sign language? :) I can sign for hours on end and I don't get tired arms/shoulders/whatevers, though a few interpreters gets RSI from signing for too much.
He didn't say every manager is a good one, he said every *good* manager knows that employees need some time to themeslves - which he means those managers that are good knows that employees need some time to themselves - i.e. managers that doesn't know that (like yours) are NOT good managers. Good managers are rare, but they do exist and they do know that employees need time to themselves. Working in the big bad world for the first time ever, I was told "There's a break at 11 in the coffee room, and lunch is usually at 1 to 2 but up to you really". After a few weeks, I asked if there were an official break in the afternoon, my manager said "Eh, take breaks whenever you want" - and eventually I found out that I can start work whenever I want, go home whenever I want, take as much breaks I want doing anything I want (respecting the IT policy of course, such as not surfing porn etc) but as long as I get the work done. It's generally expected that I come in every working day though, at a reasonable time. If I don't do my work, I get warned, then eventually fired. I won't get fired for slacking off. Shame the manager quit after 3 months and his manager hasn't replaced him (that was 3 years ago) and he's micromanaging to the extreme - tho the policies stays in place.
I remember watching a technology program on TV (Tomorrow's World?) several years ago and they showed a gizmo on wheels that mounted under the police car at the front, on a small ramp, with 2 metal foil triangles folded down and away safely. And when the police car was behind the car the police car was chasing, the policeman pressed a button and the gizmo fired something like a rocket motor and launched itself off the ramp and on the road, the 2 metal foil triangles popped up - one each end of the gizmo (front and back) and the gizmo went under the car in front and zapped the car with a high voltage current and destroyed the electronics of the car and brought it to a halt. As the gizmo on TV was a prototype, it didn't work. I've never heard about it since, so it probably didn't work out in the end, but it did exist before, so you can't claim prior art ;)
Have tried and googled for a solution but couldn't find it. Sorry!
It's interesting really, I've heard a *lot* about rebates from the US, but I've never ever seen *anything* like rebates here in the UK - the prices you see is what you pay, you don't have to claim a portion back. To be honest, the rebate idea all sounds insane - giving the shop more money than the product is worth and getting it back later on. Right.
Anyway. Why is the rebate system rampant in the US (I think so anyway) while it doesn't exist at all in the UK?
The CMOS battery hasn't been rechargeable since the 486 era - they now use lithium button cells nowadays which isn't rechargeable. So no charger in the computer.
Canada? Which State is that then, and where is it in the US?
They already exist but they're being phased out because they're not safe :)