It is possible that there will never be a better type of "battery" than a hydrogen fuel cell, but can we be sure? The current vehicle fuel supply system has been around for a hundred years and cost fantastically large amounts of money. Are we so sure about hydrogen that we are willing to make a similar 100-year bet?
I don't even think we will avoid having batteries in our cars. In city driving, you can't beat the efficiency gains you can have from regenerative breaking. If your car needs a battery anyway, why not just go with a fully electric system?
Why do we assume that electric cars have too short a range? Why do we assume a car has to be able to travel at least 400 miles without refueling? If we accept a shorter time between refueling, battery-powered cars might be the best way to go.
The Apollo Command module couldn't use batteries because there was no way to build enough recharging stations between here and the moon:-)
If we switch to hydrogen, we'll have to change the car refueling infrastructure. Why not change to a system of quick recharging electric outlets? So what if cars will only have a range of 100 miles if there are fast recharging stations every 20 miles.
Maybe it would be better for the environment to use hydrogen fuel cells, but there are a lot of factors to weigh. Look at how much it cost to create the current fossil-fuel supply system. Are we sure we want to saddle ourselves with an equally expensive hydrogen fuel supply system? The power to run fuel cell cars is coming from generated electricity; I don't think it is smart to choose one particular method of transferring that electricity into vehicles.
The car needs energy to run. That can be supplied by burning fuel or directly out of a plug in the wall. You don't need any fuel to power an electric car, even if you might need it to generate the electricity in the future.
Oh, and there are solar-powered cars that don't need any fuel; even if it would take pixie dust to create the solar cells to power a 6000 pound SUV:-)
There is only one problem with waiting until the oil is almost gone before switching to something else; we'll need lots of energy to make the switch.
As you say, oil production will finally stop when the cost of extracting the remaining oils is too high; but at that point we might be facing global warming on a huge scale, or there may not be enough energy left to power society until an alternative is found.
We need to be smart about this, the sooner we start switching to something renewable, the cheaper it will be. If we don't try to anticipate and avoid problems, we'll pay a much higher price trying fixing them than avoiding them.
Re:If it's ready to happen, it will, despite gov't
on
The End of the Oil Age
·
· Score: 1
The problem is there is a long lead-time in changing how we do things. The cars we manufacture now will be in service for 10 years; if prices go up and encourage conservation 5 years from now, there will be a whole lot of vehicles on the road that are too expensive to scrap. Remember that it takes energy to build a vehicle too; about as much as it will burn during its lifetime, so replacing vehicles before they are worn out will not save energy.
It might be necessary for the government to promote change, even before it is necessary; to avoid extra costs that would result if we waited until it is absolutely necessary.
America has to import oil from somewhere, there aren't enough supplies in the U.S. alone, so this should be of some concern.
I agree with your statement that we know more about conservation than we did; but we aren't doing anything about it! Cars last 10 years or more, so someone buying an SUV is buying a big problem if gas gets more expensive 5 years from now. We may be able to build more efficient vehicles, but it will take us a decade before the cars we sell now are ready to be retired.
And by the way, scrapping gas-guzzlers won't be a viable alternative. It takes about as much power to build a car as it does to drive it. Replacing a gas-guzzler requires a large amount of energy; it will likely be better to keep running it until it wears out than replace it when it is still serviceable.
Is using power to generate hydrogen and then "burning" the hydrogen in a fuel cell more efficient than simply charging a battery and using generated electricity directly?
Hydrogen fuel cell cars are electric cars. Why should we restrict ourselves to using hydrogen to transfer power from generators into cars?
This scheme would be even easier if we transitioned to electric powered cars. Then we could use any generation method. Why is a transition to hydrogen better than a transition to direct electric power? I think we'd have more flexibility if we switched away from using fuel at all.
I don't understand your point. You seem to be arguing that we need to go with hydrogen because that can be generated from electricity. The hydrogen is then converted back into electricity via a fuel cell to power the car.
Why add the conversion losses of splitting water and then recombining it again? Why not just use the electricity directly in the car?
I guess hydrogen is better because there are multiple ways to create it vs. the single practical method for producing gasoline. But I think the important part is to use electricity to power cars, this is the important part; not that electric power can be transferred from generators to individual vehicles using hydrogen as the transfer agent; that is surely less versatile than plugging in your car and charging up batteries with electricity right from the generator.
I have been using X10 home automation stuff for more than 15 years, and in all that time I have seen many companies, like IBM or RCA, try to get into the business. In just about every case, they just offered rebadged versions of X10 stuff; it is obvious if you look at them.
Leviton sells a line of high-quality X10 stuff, but it is much more expensive. I'm not sure if they make their own stuff either; the X10 pro stuff looks pretty much the same.
Now I think SmartHome does manufacture and design its own devices; at least I hope so. If X10 goes out of business, I don't know where I will go to buy home automation stuff at a reasonable price.
I am a self-respecting geek and I see X10 ads every day; of course I opted-in to their e-mail ads so I can see when a good sale happens:-)
X10 makes the only home automation devices that cost a reasonable amount (often 1/4 of the cost of competitors). I have bought plenty of stuff from X10, but never their cameras.
Despite everyone's opinion, I think they are one of the best Internet companies and I hope they don't go under. They are certainly one of the best sites for Canadians; they ship from a warehouse in Canada so you don't have to deal with the border. This is way better than other sites that ship via UPS despite my pleas to use anyone else. UPS adds a $35 dollar "broker" fee in addition to shipping to Canada, for any purchase amount. My last order for $115 including shipping, cost me $55 dollars more at the door, and only $15 of that was tax and duty. And what's worse, the site claimed they would ship by FedEx!
You don't need HDTV to watch DVDs; all you need is a standard TV that has a widescreen mode that handles anamorphic DVDs (like most Sonys) and you'll be able to see all the resolution on the DVD. HDTV is actually overkill.
The Ford Ranger is actually less efficient since you didn't account for the energy costs of producing the gas. Producing gasoline from crude oil is about 88% efficient.
Well they're making money from me by selling low-price home automation devices; I'm not interested in the cameras. I wish they'd quit fooling around with cameras and update their decades-old home automation designs. Some pop-up ads explaining how you can control all your lights with a remote control might finally get home automation into the mainstream, so they could afford to develop non-seedy products.
This is where I think the real danger will be with new TVs and other devices. I foresee a day when your TV set automatically "upgrades" its software (without your permission) so that you can no longer change the channel during ads. It's only fair since those advertisers paid to bring you the program, and all they ask is you watch a short, enjoyable commercial.
Actually, DAT tapes are different than cassette tapes, and still live on as backup devices.
I think you are thinking of DCC, by Philips (who invented cassettes). I believe these things could read analog cassettes, but needed special tapes to record digitally.
The RIAA companies won't instantly become obsolete and die off because they own the music, and essentially the artist (because of the long term, very restrictive contracts those artists signed). The RIAA would already be out of business if musicians owned their music and could shop around for the best distribution deal.
The RIAA companies own essentially all existing music (and will continue to do so, thanks to copyright extension, for at least the next hundred years), and therefore there is no real leverage over them. The only hope is to stop buying their overpriced, mostly crappy CDs until they offer something better and cheaper.
Capitalism kind of sucks because there is no way to make a company manufacture something you want to buy; it is their choice what they manufacture and sell. The customer's only power is to refuse to buy a product they don't like. Consumer pressure over the last five years has finally induced the record companies to lower prices a little and offer a very limited selection of music for download. I figure that after another five years of pressure, they might finally be forced to manufacture and sell what customers like me actually want.
I'm disappointed that the RIAA didn't learn anything from the MPAA's stupid attempt to kill off VCRs. The MPAA was lucky their attempt failed because sales of video tapes and DVDs has hugely increased their revenue. I wish these companies would just skip the pointless phase of fighting the technology and just skip to the point where they make huge amounts of money by exploiting new technology to make customers happy and themselves much richer.
Until a year ago, that "off repeated lie" that the RIAA wasn't doing anything to embrace new technology was true. This current attempt isn't embracing technology; it is a desperate measure that consumers have forced the RIAA to do. For a long time the RIAA tried to resist consumer pressure to sell music at a lower price and in a more convenient way, because that would lower their profits (and there is nothing wrong with the RIAA trying to do that); but customers defeated them in the end. The fact that they have finally bowed to consumer pressure doesn't impress me a bit.
In fact, now that I am used to not buying new CDs (until a few years ago, I bought about 100 a year), the RIAA is going to have to do a lot better than they used to. I am happy to spend my time watching the DVDs I buy at reasonable prices (often lower than the price of CDs) rather than listening to CDs, so they are actually going to have to embrace change if they want me as a customer again. I don't think I am alone in this attitude.
I'd like to believe that Joe User has some economic power to influence what will happen, but if Windows2005 only runs on secure hardware and the music and movie companies only release DRM material, there isn't a lot anyone can do make them change their minds.
I want to buy a legal DVD player that lets me skip over the FBI warning; where can I get one? I was able to record my laser disks onto my VCR, but I can't buy a legal DVD player that will let me do that. Yet, I was willing to switch to copy-protected DVD's simply because they cost less that half as much as laser disks and had better quality too. All the media companies have to do is make sure the DRM material is a little cheaper and a little better and people will accept it. Then we'll all be screwed.
>How sad is it when people are encouraged to take other people's wealth instead of create their own?
It isn't that straight-forward; it is hard to determine who is responsible for creating wealth.
Let's assume that someone is willing to pay $15 for a widget, and it costs $5 to make it. Since the widget is worth more than it costs to make, this represents $10 of wealth.
If the price of the widget is $15, then the buyer didn't get any of this wealth, they paid exactly what it was worth. If the price of the widget is $5, then the seller doesn't make any profit and all the wealth goes to the buyer. Any price in between splits this wealth.
I think our society, or at least our journalists, is biased to only counting wealth that shows up in the bank accounts of sellers. Sure wealth is created when sellers figure out ways to lower the cost of production, create new items, or figure out how to charge more money; but we shouldn't forget that getting a bargain also creates wealth. Just remember that the wealth isn't created until the item is sold, and that transaction, that requires both a buyer and seller, is what creates wealth.
You might want to look into using a Pronto remote. These things have a touch screen that you can program using a Windows program. Although the only font it has is English (plus a bunch of baffling symbols), you can use whatever graphics you want for buttons; which could include Cyrillic characters. You can also make the graphical buttons and text extra big, if that helps your grandmother.
I think a Pronto remote is harder to set up than a Harmony remote, but it is probably more capable for around the same price. If you want Cyrillic, you will have to go with a touch screen remote.
The Harmony remote tries to track the state of devices for you, I haven't tried a Harmony remote but it sounds like they have a good solution to the problem.
The other solution is to try to find the discrete power IR codes for your device. Just about every device I own has the capability to accept separate "power on" and "power off" codes that do not toggle. Even my 15-year-old Sony TV accepts these codes.
The problem is that these codes don't normally appear as buttons on a remote. I have a Pronto remote, so I was able to download these codes off the net. The Pronto is the best universal remote I have owned, (and I've used at least 6 different ones over the last 10 years or so) but it is expensive. There may be cheaper remotes that are capable of loading IR codes from the net; or you can just find someone who owns a Pronto and use it to program your learning remote.
A surprising number of devices have discrete codes; in fact I think all of my devices happen to have them, even my 15 year old Sony TV. That's actually a very important reason to get a Philips Pronto remote, since you can download those codes from the net; very few remotes have discrete buttons.
Even the toggle problem can be overcome. I believe the Harmony remote tracks the state of devices (or at least which buttons have been pressed on the remote), and determines whether to toggle power or not. The remote has a special mode to update the internal state to reflect the state of the system, if they get out of sync.
I find that source or option selection is a much bigger issue. For example, most TV remotes have only a TV/VIDEO button to cycle through multiple inputs. Without discrete codes for video input, I'd have a much harder time programming my macros. Another similar problem is automated programming of a VCR; a lot of them start from the current clock time and have up and down buttons to set the date/time. That's useless for automation. It's also usually impossible to set the volume to a discrete value; I wish all my devices could be set to start at a specified volume level.
Actually, Microsoft had fixed it already; they sold a fully programmable touch screen remote, the TC1000. I think it is now discontinued. The Philips Pronto, which is still available, is better.
There is no reason to suffer with multiple poorly designed remotes any more; you can buy fully programmable remotes that will replace all your remotes, no matter what.
I don't think we need to wait for a solution to user control of A/V devices; but computer control of A/V devices is a bigger problem. Without feedback about the state of a piece of equipment, there is no way to reliably control it by computer. If that is important to you, you'll have to wait (probably longer than 5 years); but you'd be amazed what you can do with macros on a remote to automate an A/V system.
If you have macros, why are you pushing all those buttons? Shouldn't you program a macro to do it? I have programmed my Philips Pronto to do similar functions for each device in two completely separate stereo systems.
With the Pronto, you can program as many macros as you wish and assign them to any remote "button"; and since it is a touch-screen remote, your buttons can have any labels or arrangement you want. You can program all the different speeds for your DVD player or the surround modes on your receiver, and label them so that you can remember which buttons to press. This remote doesn't just learn any code, it can use codes that other people have learned and posted on the Internet!
There are only two downsides to this remote, the price ($200-$400) and the time it takes to program it exactly how you want (about a week). But despite trying about 8 different remotes over the last 10 years, the Pronto is the first remote that allowed me to put ALL my other remotes away; I never have to use anything but the Pronto.
Slashdot Mirror
It is possible that there will never be a better type of "battery" than a hydrogen fuel cell, but can we be sure? The current vehicle fuel supply system has been around for a hundred years and cost fantastically large amounts of money. Are we so sure about hydrogen that we are willing to make a similar 100-year bet?
I don't even think we will avoid having batteries in our cars. In city driving, you can't beat the efficiency gains you can have from regenerative breaking. If your car needs a battery anyway, why not just go with a fully electric system?
Why do we assume that electric cars have too short a range? Why do we assume a car has to be able to travel at least 400 miles without refueling? If we accept a shorter time between refueling, battery-powered cars might be the best way to go.
The Apollo Command module couldn't use batteries because there was no way to build enough recharging stations between here and the moon :-)
If we switch to hydrogen, we'll have to change the car refueling infrastructure. Why not change to a system of quick recharging electric outlets? So what if cars will only have a range of 100 miles if there are fast recharging stations every 20 miles.
Maybe it would be better for the environment to use hydrogen fuel cells, but there are a lot of factors to weigh. Look at how much it cost to create the current fossil-fuel supply system. Are we sure we want to saddle ourselves with an equally expensive hydrogen fuel supply system? The power to run fuel cell cars is coming from generated electricity; I don't think it is smart to choose one particular method of transferring that electricity into vehicles.
The car needs energy to run. That can be supplied by burning fuel or directly out of a plug in the wall. You don't need any fuel to power an electric car, even if you might need it to generate the electricity in the future.
:-)
Oh, and there are solar-powered cars that don't need any fuel; even if it would take pixie dust to create the solar cells to power a 6000 pound SUV
There is only one problem with waiting until the oil is almost gone before switching to something else; we'll need lots of energy to make the switch.
As you say, oil production will finally stop when the cost of extracting the remaining oils is too high; but at that point we might be facing global warming on a huge scale, or there may not be enough energy left to power society until an alternative is found.
We need to be smart about this, the sooner we start switching to something renewable, the cheaper it will be. If we don't try to anticipate and avoid problems, we'll pay a much higher price trying fixing them than avoiding them.
The problem is there is a long lead-time in changing how we do things. The cars we manufacture now will be in service for 10 years; if prices go up and encourage conservation 5 years from now, there will be a whole lot of vehicles on the road that are too expensive to scrap. Remember that it takes energy to build a vehicle too; about as much as it will burn during its lifetime, so replacing vehicles before they are worn out will not save energy.
It might be necessary for the government to promote change, even before it is necessary; to avoid extra costs that would result if we waited until it is absolutely necessary.
America has to import oil from somewhere, there aren't enough supplies in the U.S. alone, so this should be of some concern.
I agree with your statement that we know more about conservation than we did; but we aren't doing anything about it! Cars last 10 years or more, so someone buying an SUV is buying a big problem if gas gets more expensive 5 years from now. We may be able to build more efficient vehicles, but it will take us a decade before the cars we sell now are ready to be retired.
And by the way, scrapping gas-guzzlers won't be a viable alternative. It takes about as much power to build a car as it does to drive it. Replacing a gas-guzzler requires a large amount of energy; it will likely be better to keep running it until it wears out than replace it when it is still serviceable.
Is using power to generate hydrogen and then "burning" the hydrogen in a fuel cell more efficient than simply charging a battery and using generated electricity directly?
Hydrogen fuel cell cars are electric cars. Why should we restrict ourselves to using hydrogen to transfer power from generators into cars?
This scheme would be even easier if we transitioned to electric powered cars. Then we could use any generation method. Why is a transition to hydrogen better than a transition to direct electric power? I think we'd have more flexibility if we switched away from using fuel at all.
I don't understand your point. You seem to be arguing that we need to go with hydrogen because that can be generated from electricity. The hydrogen is then converted back into electricity via a fuel cell to power the car.
Why add the conversion losses of splitting water and then recombining it again? Why not just use the electricity directly in the car?
I guess hydrogen is better because there are multiple ways to create it vs. the single practical method for producing gasoline. But I think the important part is to use electricity to power cars, this is the important part; not that electric power can be transferred from generators to individual vehicles using hydrogen as the transfer agent; that is surely less versatile than plugging in your car and charging up batteries with electricity right from the generator.
I have been using X10 home automation stuff for more than 15 years, and in all that time I have seen many companies, like IBM or RCA, try to get into the business. In just about every case, they just offered rebadged versions of X10 stuff; it is obvious if you look at them.
Leviton sells a line of high-quality X10 stuff, but it is much more expensive. I'm not sure if they make their own stuff either; the X10 pro stuff looks pretty much the same.
Now I think SmartHome does manufacture and design its own devices; at least I hope so. If X10 goes out of business, I don't know where I will go to buy home automation stuff at a reasonable price.
I am a self-respecting geek and I see X10 ads every day; of course I opted-in to their e-mail ads so I can see when a good sale happens :-)
X10 makes the only home automation devices that cost a reasonable amount (often 1/4 of the cost of competitors). I have bought plenty of stuff from X10, but never their cameras.
Despite everyone's opinion, I think they are one of the best Internet companies and I hope they don't go under. They are certainly one of the best sites for Canadians; they ship from a warehouse in Canada so you don't have to deal with the border. This is way better than other sites that ship via UPS despite my pleas to use anyone else. UPS adds a $35 dollar "broker" fee in addition to shipping to Canada, for any purchase amount. My last order for $115 including shipping, cost me $55 dollars more at the door, and only $15 of that was tax and duty. And what's worse, the site claimed they would ship by FedEx!
You don't need HDTV to watch DVDs; all you need is a standard TV that has a widescreen mode that handles anamorphic DVDs (like most Sonys) and you'll be able to see all the resolution on the DVD. HDTV is actually overkill.
The Ford Ranger is actually less efficient since you didn't account for the energy costs of producing the gas. Producing gasoline from crude oil is about 88% efficient.
Well they're making money from me by selling low-price home automation devices; I'm not interested in the cameras. I wish they'd quit fooling around with cameras and update their decades-old home automation designs. Some pop-up ads explaining how you can control all your lights with a remote control might finally get home automation into the mainstream, so they could afford to develop non-seedy products.
This is where I think the real danger will be with new TVs and other devices. I foresee a day when your TV set automatically "upgrades" its software (without your permission) so that you can no longer change the channel during ads. It's only fair since those advertisers paid to bring you the program, and all they ask is you watch a short, enjoyable commercial.
Actually, DAT tapes are different than cassette tapes, and still live on as backup devices.
I think you are thinking of DCC, by Philips (who invented cassettes). I believe these things could read analog cassettes, but needed special tapes to record digitally.
The RIAA companies won't instantly become obsolete and die off because they own the music, and essentially the artist (because of the long term, very restrictive contracts those artists signed). The RIAA would already be out of business if musicians owned their music and could shop around for the best distribution deal.
The RIAA companies own essentially all existing music (and will continue to do so, thanks to copyright extension, for at least the next hundred years), and therefore there is no real leverage over them. The only hope is to stop buying their overpriced, mostly crappy CDs until they offer something better and cheaper.
Capitalism kind of sucks because there is no way to make a company manufacture something you want to buy; it is their choice what they manufacture and sell. The customer's only power is to refuse to buy a product they don't like. Consumer pressure over the last five years has finally induced the record companies to lower prices a little and offer a very limited selection of music for download. I figure that after another five years of pressure, they might finally be forced to manufacture and sell what customers like me actually want.
I'm disappointed that the RIAA didn't learn anything from the MPAA's stupid attempt to kill off VCRs. The MPAA was lucky their attempt failed because sales of video tapes and DVDs has hugely increased their revenue. I wish these companies would just skip the pointless phase of fighting the technology and just skip to the point where they make huge amounts of money by exploiting new technology to make customers happy and themselves much richer.
Until a year ago, that "off repeated lie" that the RIAA wasn't doing anything to embrace new technology was true. This current attempt isn't embracing technology; it is a desperate measure that consumers have forced the RIAA to do. For a long time the RIAA tried to resist consumer pressure to sell music at a lower price and in a more convenient way, because that would lower their profits (and there is nothing wrong with the RIAA trying to do that); but customers defeated them in the end. The fact that they have finally bowed to consumer pressure doesn't impress me a bit.
In fact, now that I am used to not buying new CDs (until a few years ago, I bought about 100 a year), the RIAA is going to have to do a lot better than they used to. I am happy to spend my time watching the DVDs I buy at reasonable prices (often lower than the price of CDs) rather than listening to CDs, so they are actually going to have to embrace change if they want me as a customer again. I don't think I am alone in this attitude.
I'd like to believe that Joe User has some economic power to influence what will happen, but if Windows2005 only runs on secure hardware and the music and movie companies only release DRM material, there isn't a lot anyone can do make them change their minds.
I want to buy a legal DVD player that lets me skip over the FBI warning; where can I get one? I was able to record my laser disks onto my VCR, but I can't buy a legal DVD player that will let me do that. Yet, I was willing to switch to copy-protected DVD's simply because they cost less that half as much as laser disks and had better quality too. All the media companies have to do is make sure the DRM material is a little cheaper and a little better and people will accept it. Then we'll all be screwed.
>How sad is it when people are encouraged to take other people's wealth instead of create their own?
It isn't that straight-forward; it is hard to determine who is responsible for creating wealth.
Let's assume that someone is willing to pay $15 for a widget, and it costs $5 to make it. Since the widget is worth more than it costs to make, this represents $10 of wealth.
If the price of the widget is $15, then the buyer didn't get any of this wealth, they paid exactly what it was worth. If the price of the widget is $5, then the seller doesn't make any profit and all the wealth goes to the buyer. Any price in between splits this wealth.
I think our society, or at least our journalists, is biased to only counting wealth that shows up in the bank accounts of sellers. Sure wealth is created when sellers figure out ways to lower the cost of production, create new items, or figure out how to charge more money; but we shouldn't forget that getting a bargain also creates wealth. Just remember that the wealth isn't created until the item is sold, and that transaction, that requires both a buyer and seller, is what creates wealth.
You might want to look into using a Pronto remote. These things have a touch screen that you can program using a Windows program. Although the only font it has is English (plus a bunch of baffling symbols), you can use whatever graphics you want for buttons; which could include Cyrillic characters. You can also make the graphical buttons and text extra big, if that helps your grandmother.
I think a Pronto remote is harder to set up than a Harmony remote, but it is probably more capable for around the same price. If you want Cyrillic, you will have to go with a touch screen remote.
The Harmony remote tries to track the state of devices for you, I haven't tried a Harmony remote but it sounds like they have a good solution to the problem.
The other solution is to try to find the discrete power IR codes for your device. Just about every device I own has the capability to accept separate "power on" and "power off" codes that do not toggle. Even my 15-year-old Sony TV accepts these codes.
The problem is that these codes don't normally appear as buttons on a remote. I have a Pronto remote, so I was able to download these codes off the net. The Pronto is the best universal remote I have owned, (and I've used at least 6 different ones over the last 10 years or so) but it is expensive. There may be cheaper remotes that are capable of loading IR codes from the net; or you can just find someone who owns a Pronto and use it to program your learning remote.
A surprising number of devices have discrete codes; in fact I think all of my devices happen to have them, even my 15 year old Sony TV. That's actually a very important reason to get a Philips Pronto remote, since you can download those codes from the net; very few remotes have discrete buttons.
Even the toggle problem can be overcome. I believe the Harmony remote tracks the state of devices (or at least which buttons have been pressed on the remote), and determines whether to toggle power or not. The remote has a special mode to update the internal state to reflect the state of the system, if they get out of sync.
I find that source or option selection is a much bigger issue. For example, most TV remotes have only a TV/VIDEO button to cycle through multiple inputs. Without discrete codes for video input, I'd have a much harder time programming my macros. Another similar problem is automated programming of a VCR; a lot of them start from the current clock time and have up and down buttons to set the date/time. That's useless for automation. It's also usually impossible to set the volume to a discrete value; I wish all my devices could be set to start at a specified volume level.
Actually, Microsoft had fixed it already; they sold a fully programmable touch screen remote, the TC1000. I think it is now discontinued. The Philips Pronto, which is still available, is better.
There is no reason to suffer with multiple poorly designed remotes any more; you can buy fully programmable remotes that will replace all your remotes, no matter what.
I don't think we need to wait for a solution to user control of A/V devices; but computer control of A/V devices is a bigger problem. Without feedback about the state of a piece of equipment, there is no way to reliably control it by computer. If that is important to you, you'll have to wait (probably longer than 5 years); but you'd be amazed what you can do with macros on a remote to automate an A/V system.
If you have macros, why are you pushing all those buttons? Shouldn't you program a macro to do it? I have programmed my Philips Pronto to do similar functions for each device in two completely separate stereo systems.
With the Pronto, you can program as many macros as you wish and assign them to any remote "button"; and since it is a touch-screen remote, your buttons can have any labels or arrangement you want. You can program all the different speeds for your DVD player or the surround modes on your receiver, and label them so that you can remember which buttons to press. This remote doesn't just learn any code, it can use codes that other people have learned and posted on the Internet!
There are only two downsides to this remote, the price ($200-$400) and the time it takes to program it exactly how you want (about a week). But despite trying about 8 different remotes over the last 10 years, the Pronto is the first remote that allowed me to put ALL my other remotes away; I never have to use anything but the Pronto.