I hate to tell you this, but the government is cooking the books. Forget gold, forget the CPI. Let's talk about the price of a movie, the price of a good used car, the price of a kilowatt hour, a gallon of gas/diesel/propane, a pound of alumin(i)um/coal/steel, a trip to McDonald's, an appendectomy, a semester hour, an oil change, a newspaper, a glass of beer, a can of Coke, a pound of hamburger, a trip to the dentist, a 9-volt battery, a ft^3 of natural gas, a visit from the plumber, a new refrigerator... I could go on and on. Actually, I did:D
Yes, the price of many of these things has doubled, some tripled, some more than that, in the last 10 years. The fact that most of these are commodities (as suggested elsewhere) doesn't make a bit of difference. Hell, money itself is a commodity. Think of money as (your own) "hours worked". How many hours did you have to work 10 years ago versus how many hours you have to work today to get one of the above things. Are you suggesting that (all other things being equal) that you only have to work 25.75 minutes today to get the same buying power you got ten years ago from 20 minutes work? That's what the government-cooked numbers numbers you're quoting would suggest.
And the reason those boxes are of such crappy quality is because the cable companies have such a tight lock. The cable companies want to keep the box cost down to maximize their own profits. If Motorola and SA could sell directly to consumers, they would suddenly have an incentive to improve the quality.
Editorials are opinion, not legitimate reporting of facts.
Exactly. I want less balance in the blogs I read. I want ranting, foaming, wild-eyed, screaming FANATICISM. I want blogs to make Alex Jones and the guy from timecube.com look St. Thomas Aquinas. I want blogs to cause stammering inarticulate rage, bleeding from the ears and epileptic seizures in people of opposing viewpoints. That's entertainment.
That's a really interesting point. So had the IBM PC come out today, no one would be able to copy it, the phrase "IBM compatible" would never be coined, and the PC revolution wouldn't have happened, or would happen MUCH more slowly. I think this a wonderful gedanken experiment for how patents (in their current form) actually stifle, rather than promote innovation.
Yeah, the verb tenses are a little confused, but you know what I mean.
Uh, could you somehow spin (regardless of truth) this as related to war and/or military prowess so our administration will mindlessly throw money at it instead of mindlessly ignoring it?
The best quote of the month, and it's only the 13th!
> He's no worse than Mark Hamil.
I meant the way the scene/dialog was written for cutseypoo comic effect, not necessarily the actors per se.
> Oh please all the movies are full of ridiculous accents.
Go back and watch it again. Hers is just breathtakingly bad.
> But the Death Star with its magical earth-like gravity generator makes sense?
Yup, same one they used in the Star Trek franchise, Space 1999, Babylon 5, Dr. Who, and others.
>...but most of all you were like 5 years old when they came out.
Actually, my first exposure to Darth Vader was in the theater, just after my fiance and I had smoked a huge joint. When he came onscreen, I said "Oooooh, he's eeeeevil".
But we were talking about midichlorians. That was the thing that broke the soul (literally) of the first three episodes. Suddenly good and evil, force or dark side didn't matter anymore, being Jedi was just something you were born with.
Yeah, the midichlorians really threw the spirituality/mythology themes under the bus. Oddly enough, I saw the last 2/3 of episode 1 Phantom Menace just last night - I hadn't seen it since the theater when it first came out. I remember walking out of the theater thinking "well, that wasn't too bad", but last night all I could see was Mannequin Skywalker mugging through "oops, I accidentally blew up the android control satellite" as R2D2 comically whistles and squeaks, Natalie Portman's ridiculous accent, the preposterous locale for the big lightsaber duel, etc. etc. etc. It's one thing to suspend disbelief, but that movie suspends believability.
Seriously, it's nice (and more than a little surprising) to see a government body do something so forward-thinking. We'll probably see fusion plants (in another 10-20 years;-) before we see anything like fully robotic cars. Every year we talk here about the DARPA Grand Challenge, and that's just for a single vehicle, albeit off-road. Still, we're likely to see incremental uses of this kind of technology, particularly combined with GPS: tailgating prevention, traffic jam avoidance, gapers delay prevention (yay!), emergency vehicle path-clearing, etc. Kudos to the EU for reserving a chunk of the spectrum now, rather than later.
That's why it tickled me - "diffuse" as in "deflagration". He meant to say "defuse" as in "disarm".
The "informative" (rather than "funny") mods just leave me shaking my head.
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I hate to tell you this, but the government is cooking the books. Forget gold, forget the CPI. Let's talk about the price of a movie, the price of a good used car, the price of a kilowatt hour, a gallon of gas/diesel/propane, a pound of alumin(i)um/coal/steel, a trip to McDonald's, an appendectomy, a semester hour, an oil change, a newspaper, a glass of beer, a can of Coke, a pound of hamburger, a trip to the dentist, a 9-volt battery, a ft^3 of natural gas, a visit from the plumber, a new refrigerator... I could go on and on. Actually, I did :D
Yes, the price of many of these things has doubled, some tripled, some more than that, in the last 10 years. The fact that most of these are commodities (as suggested elsewhere) doesn't make a bit of difference. Hell, money itself is a commodity. Think of money as (your own) "hours worked". How many hours did you have to work 10 years ago versus how many hours you have to work today to get one of the above things. Are you suggesting that (all other things being equal) that you only have to work 25.75 minutes today to get the same buying power you got ten years ago from 20 minutes work? That's what the government-cooked numbers numbers you're quoting would suggest.
Dude, $20 nine years ago is way way way more REAL money than $60 is now. Take a look here.
And the reason those boxes are of such crappy quality is because the cable companies have such a tight lock. The cable companies want to keep the box cost down to maximize their own profits. If Motorola and SA could sell directly to consumers, they would suddenly have an incentive to improve the quality.
Exactly. I want less balance in the blogs I read. I want ranting, foaming, wild-eyed, screaming FANATICISM. I want blogs to make Alex Jones and the guy from timecube.com look St. Thomas Aquinas. I want blogs to cause stammering inarticulate rage, bleeding from the ears and epileptic seizures in people of opposing viewpoints. That's entertainment.
70%? That's like, half, right?
I hate examples written in Perl.
That's a really interesting point. So had the IBM PC come out today, no one would be able to copy it, the phrase "IBM compatible" would never be coined, and the PC revolution wouldn't have happened, or would happen MUCH more slowly. I think this a wonderful gedanken experiment for how patents (in their current form) actually stifle, rather than promote innovation.
Yeah, the verb tenses are a little confused, but you know what I mean.
Anybody remember when IBM (which was mightier than Apple can ever hope to be) failed at utterly crushing tiny Compaq?
The best quote of the month, and it's only the 13th!
> He's no worse than Mark Hamil.
...but most of all you were like 5 years old when they came out.
I meant the way the scene/dialog was written for cutseypoo comic effect, not necessarily the actors per se.
> Oh please all the movies are full of ridiculous accents.
Go back and watch it again. Hers is just breathtakingly bad.
> But the Death Star with its magical earth-like gravity generator makes sense?
Yup, same one they used in the Star Trek franchise, Space 1999, Babylon 5, Dr. Who, and others.
>
Actually, my first exposure to Darth Vader was in the theater, just after my fiance and I had smoked a huge joint. When he came onscreen, I said "Oooooh, he's eeeeevil".
But we were talking about midichlorians. That was the thing that broke the soul (literally) of the first three episodes. Suddenly good and evil, force or dark side didn't matter anymore, being Jedi was just something you were born with.
Yeah, the midichlorians really threw the spirituality/mythology themes under the bus. Oddly enough, I saw the last 2/3 of episode 1 Phantom Menace just last night - I hadn't seen it since the theater when it first came out. I remember walking out of the theater thinking "well, that wasn't too bad", but last night all I could see was Mannequin Skywalker mugging through "oops, I accidentally blew up the android control satellite" as R2D2 comically whistles and squeaks, Natalie Portman's ridiculous accent, the preposterous locale for the big lightsaber duel, etc. etc. etc. It's one thing to suspend disbelief, but that movie suspends believability.
And then of course there's Jar Jar.
In Chicago, the moment the light goes green, all the cars start honking their horns.
I was promised a flying car!
;-) before we see anything like fully robotic cars. Every year we talk here about the DARPA Grand Challenge, and that's just for a single vehicle, albeit off-road. Still, we're likely to see incremental uses of this kind of technology, particularly combined with GPS: tailgating prevention, traffic jam avoidance, gapers delay prevention (yay!), emergency vehicle path-clearing, etc. Kudos to the EU for reserving a chunk of the spectrum now, rather than later.
Seriously, it's nice (and more than a little surprising) to see a government body do something so forward-thinking. We'll probably see fusion plants (in another 10-20 years
I want some red LEDs in my contacts, so my eyes will look like glowing red coals in the dark.
D) Jump up on the nearest boulder (apologies/kudos to the current Republican administration) and shout "everything you know is wrong!!!"
e) then have sex with the antagonist...
What if they have to maintain someone else's Perl?
Why not? Sometimes I turn beer into code.
Think of it as counter-theater. "See, even Osama bin Laden could get into the US with this..."
I'm also an insensitive clod, you lesbian!
There. Fixed it for you.
That's why it tickled me - "diffuse" as in "deflagration". He meant to say "defuse" as in "disarm".
The "informative" (rather than "funny") mods just leave me shaking my head.
I'm a lesbian trapped in a man's body, you insensitive clod!
Trust me, if the bomb diffuses, things just got WAY worse.
I'm sure he's currently paying Microsoft support fees per desktop and per server.
How is he NOT comparing apples and washing machines?
I think you answered your own question...