I like coffee that tastes good. To me, the best tasting coffee is one that's freshly ground and brewed at home. If I'm going to buy a cup of coffee, I'll take Starbucks over any of the garbage coffee that you buy at a gas station or convenience store.
One thing I don't like is coffee that's been sitting on a warming plate for 30+ minutes. At work, I'll dump a pot and brew a fresh one if it's been sitting out too long. At my last job, this wasn't a problem as we drank so much coffee there was a fresh pot every 15 minutes. I heard that brewed coffee keeps well in a thermal carafe as opposed to sitting on a warming plate.
Actual brewed coffee has more caffeine than an espresso.
Are you sure of that? I thought espresso had more caffeine because 212+ degree steam is passing over them and condensing into water as it passes, as opposed to soaking the beans in ~160 degree water.
Another interesting thing is how a 'cup' of coffee is measured. The US FDA considers a cup of coffee to be 5 oz. I don't know about you, but everywhere I buy coffee the smallest size is at LEAST 12 oz. That's almost 2.5 times the FDA's cup size. I don't even know how big Starbucks' largest cup is, but it's more than I can drink.
I think a better use of the technology would be to shrink the disc down. As small as CDs and DVDs are, they're still quite large and like you mention they scratch easily. I'd rather see HD-DVD/Blu-Ray technology used in a disc that holds as much as a current DVD but is the size of a gamecube game. Better yet, package the media in a permanent case like the minidisc so we'll never see scratches again.
Of course 10GB of data on something the size of an SD/xD card would be even better! The iPod Nano is a start - 4GB of flash in something relatively small (the battery takes up a lot of real estate in the nano). Is ROM significantly smaller or more dense than flash?
Google was thinking about opening their own E-Bay similar marketplace
I didn't hear anything about this, but it would certainly be a good addition to the online community. eBay needs a real competitor. There are a lot of problems with eBay and the only reason so many people still use them is because there's no alternative.
eBay/PayPal is a money machine and somebody else can certainly provide a better product and better service, grabbing a big piece of that pie.
Why bother to snipe? Why don't people enter their actual maximum bid in the max bid box. Use your brain when you are buying something and determine how much you really want to pay instead of trying to snipe just because you become attached to a particular item.
I really don't understand the mentality of a lot of eBay bidders. I sold a one year old DJ mixer ($250) and a well used Ham radio ($200) on ebay for only $20-$30 less than what brand new units were selling for. I'd rather pay extra and buy something brand new from a reputable retailer.
BINGO! I've always agreed with this concept despite it being a very unpopular opinion with just about everyone I know.
The problem with gas guzzlers in the US can be traced back to three things: GM, Chrysler, and Ford. Every time the subjects of efficiency standards and pollution come up, the big three automakers whine and say they'll lose money.
My brother's dinky 1990 Civic Hatchback gets slightly over 40MPG on the highway when he's going 75MPH. Even aggressive city driving will yield over 30MPG. This is 1990 technology.
The fact is that small lightweight cars with small engines get better mileage. The problem with us fat lazy Americans is that we like our cars BIG. The trend in the auto industry is bigger and bigger cars. I think the current Honda Civic is around the same size as the Honda Accord from the early 1990s.
When I was living in Southern California I rode my bike to work about twice a week. It was normally a 8 mile drive, however there was too much traffic along the road. Instead, I rode three miles extra to ride on the wonderful bike path that stretches from Redondo Beach to Santa Monica/Malibu. Riding along the beach was a wonderful way to start and end my workday!
Now that I'm living elsewhere and have a longer drive to work, I've looked into alternatives to save fuel. There's no carpool/vanpool from my house to work and public transportation is out of the question (It's possible, but involves a 3 mile drive to train station, three trains, and 2 hours).
For now I'm stuck with my Honda Accord however at 33MPG I can't complain, even if gas was $3 a gallon again. I noticed that when gas prices were over $3 a gallon, most of the people complaining were drivers of SUVs and pickup trucks. I personally don't have a problem with gas being $3 or even $4 a gallon. The cheaper the better, but the net effect of higher gas prices would be lower consumption. I still miss the days when $10 would get me over 300 miles with my 89 Honda Civic!
Ever hear of a DSM? It's "Diamond Star Motors", a joint venture between Mitsubishi and Chrysler. Their first generation (1989-1993) Mitsubishi Eclipse, Eagle Talon, and Plymouth Laser is notorious for leaky caps which renders the ECU useless, thus rendering your car useless. New ECUs are around $1000 I believe, so many first generation DSM owners like myself replaced the old ones by hand.
Unfortunately this problem didn't show up until after the warranty expired, but it was still a very common problem.
Faulty components can really cause problems for manufacturers. Slashdot recently ran an article about digital cameras failing because of faulty Sony CCD sensors. The problem didn't just affect Sony cameras as several manufacturers used Sony's chips in their products.
I don't know about in France, but here in the US I consider all of my 'friends of color' to be 100% American, regardless of where their parents are from, as long as they don't have a foreign accent.
Most if not all of those don't like using the term 'African-American' despite them having ancestors from Africa. I have great great grandparents from Poland, however I don't go around calling myself Polish-American because no one in my immediate family is from there. My white American-Citizen mother was born in North Africa to US Citizen parents. Does that make her African-American?
Multiculturalism seems to be working just fine, at least in major US cities such as New York and LA. I've lived in both places, and for the most part everyone gets along very well. Us white folk love Mexican and Chinese food.
When I first heard about this, I immediately wondered if the cruise ship crew had any real weapons to use to thwart attacks from a small boat. A 50 caliber automatic would be ideal for this.
Which brings up the question, are there any restrictions on bringing your own guns aboard a cruise ship? Can I just stash my AR-15 in my baggage, along with a few loaded 100 round drum magazines?
Broadcast TV isn't being phased out, however ANALOG broadcast TV is. An analog portable TV will be somewhat useless, however a portable TV with Digital receiver would be very useful.
I hear the FCC is going to make a ton of money by auctioning off portions of the spectrum that are currently 'wasted' by high bandwidth analog TV.
My mistake. My former co-workers (who are still working there) say they're still not using the smartcard functionality. I also have friends in the Army who say they haven't used the smartcard functionality either, so I (incorrectly) assumed that they weren't really used for anything.
As several previous posters pointed out, it's all about buzzwords and appearing to be 'up-to-date' on technology.
When I worked for the Navy as a Civilian several years ago, I was issued a smartcard ID that was used across the military. The idea was to hold all your personal information on the card including a fingerprint, as well as to be used for logging into their computing systems. In the year that I worked there and as far as I know today the smartcard funtionality isn't used at all. Regular ID cards would function just fine, but I guess they don't look as cool as the cards with the exposed contacts. It was an expensive deployment with a bunch of hype that never materialized into anything useful.
The cinema experience is only good for certain movies. My wife and I both have the same philosophy when it comes to movies - if there's nothing spectacular about the movie, we'll wait until it's available on DVD. Who in their right mind would pay $10+ a ticket to see "Meet the Fockers" in a theatre (on second thought, who would pay anything at all to watch it anywhere?)
There are some movies that are better seen in the theatre, and we'll gladly go see those. One of my favorite experiences was seeing X-Men II at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. I also enjoy watching some indie films at various small theatres, but my wife doesn't like most of them so I don't get to see many of them.
NetFlix seems to have the "watch it once" market somewhat figured out, but I might be wrong. The majority of my friends who have NetFlix simply use the service exactly how it was designed - rent three movies at a time, watch them, and return them. How many people are actually copying the movies?
I don't subscribe to NetFlix because I don't watch that many movies. I would enjoy a reasonably priced movie download service - like the GGGP said, something along the lines of BlockBuster's pricing of $2.99 for a movie. The nearest BlockBuster isn't that far from me, but it's out of the way. To return a movie, it's a good waste of 30 minutes (waiting at red lights, parking, getting out of the car, walking to the drop box, then waiting at more red lights on the way back home). I would love the convenience of downloading a movie rental and not having to return anything, even if it is DRM infested and expires after a week or so.
The only problem is that current DRM methods would most likely require the use of a specialized player, and it would probably be a player that I don't like. In addition, a DVD-quality movie would be HUGE and would take a long time to download even over my 4Mbps cable connection.
Despite "Homero's" strange voice in "Los Simpsons," many of my Mexican friends enjoy the show and appreciate all the humor. I would guess that it's more of a hit with native-Spanish speakers living in the US and fully aware of US culture, though I could be wrong.
When you say 'in it' do you mean supporting the RIAA or making/performing music in general? After seeing them in concert, I would believe the latter is true. It was absolutely the worst frickin concert I've ever been to. Aside from the poor acoustics (don't know if it was them or the arena) they really didn't seem to be enjoying themselves on stage. Contrast that with the Beastie Boys - that was one of the best concerts ever. It was so obvious they were having fun on stage (and making a ton of money too) which made it a much better concert.
Probably the same way that you prove you didn't sign your real signature on a piece of paper. Handwritten signatures can be forged just as easily as a digital signature.
Do you call them foolish because they're criminals or because they're using a laser printer to make counterfeit bills?
Printer/copier manufacturers are very serious about incorporating anti-counterfit technology such as the ID dots for printers and anti bill-copying technology, but how big of a problem is counterfeiting? How easy is it to make a fake bill with a color copier? Even if you can make a decent looking copy, where do you get the paper? US currency is more like fabric than paper, and it's easy to spot a fake bill printed on standard paper.
The only place I can think of where a printed bill might work is in a vending machine, and most vending machines only accept $1 (or $5 on occasion). Self-checkout machines at Wal-Mart and grocery stores accept $20s or $50s. I'm not familiar with the inner workings of bill-scanning machines like those on vending machines or at self checkouts, but I don't think it would be too difficult to detect fake bills.
Based on what I've read, the average elevation of the line is something like 13,000 feet, which is still perfectly breathable, especially to those accustomed to thin air. (I live at about 7,000, and spend weeks during the summer above 10000-11000.) It's only going to be on the high passes that you have issues with air.
I don't know if a Diesel backup would be very effective at 13,000 feet unless they had a big turbocharger. Power output on a naturally aspirated Diesel engine drops 3% for every 1000 ft. above 3000 ft. altitude.
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One thing I don't like is coffee that's been sitting on a warming plate for 30+ minutes. At work, I'll dump a pot and brew a fresh one if it's been sitting out too long. At my last job, this wasn't a problem as we drank so much coffee there was a fresh pot every 15 minutes. I heard that brewed coffee keeps well in a thermal carafe as opposed to sitting on a warming plate.
Are you sure of that? I thought espresso had more caffeine because 212+ degree steam is passing over them and condensing into water as it passes, as opposed to soaking the beans in ~160 degree water.
Another interesting thing is how a 'cup' of coffee is measured. The US FDA considers a cup of coffee to be 5 oz. I don't know about you, but everywhere I buy coffee the smallest size is at LEAST 12 oz. That's almost 2.5 times the FDA's cup size. I don't even know how big Starbucks' largest cup is, but it's more than I can drink.
url:http://www.ico.org/caffeine.asp
I prefer to be carried by a Segway.
Of course 10GB of data on something the size of an SD/xD card would be even better! The iPod Nano is a start - 4GB of flash in something relatively small (the battery takes up a lot of real estate in the nano). Is ROM significantly smaller or more dense than flash?
I didn't hear anything about this, but it would certainly be a good addition to the online community. eBay needs a real competitor. There are a lot of problems with eBay and the only reason so many people still use them is because there's no alternative.
eBay/PayPal is a money machine and somebody else can certainly provide a better product and better service, grabbing a big piece of that pie.
I really don't understand the mentality of a lot of eBay bidders. I sold a one year old DJ mixer ($250) and a well used Ham radio ($200) on ebay for only $20-$30 less than what brand new units were selling for. I'd rather pay extra and buy something brand new from a reputable retailer.
The problem with gas guzzlers in the US can be traced back to three things: GM, Chrysler, and Ford. Every time the subjects of efficiency standards and pollution come up, the big three automakers whine and say they'll lose money.
The fact is that small lightweight cars with small engines get better mileage. The problem with us fat lazy Americans is that we like our cars BIG. The trend in the auto industry is bigger and bigger cars. I think the current Honda Civic is around the same size as the Honda Accord from the early 1990s.
Now that I'm living elsewhere and have a longer drive to work, I've looked into alternatives to save fuel. There's no carpool/vanpool from my house to work and public transportation is out of the question (It's possible, but involves a 3 mile drive to train station, three trains, and 2 hours).
For now I'm stuck with my Honda Accord however at 33MPG I can't complain, even if gas was $3 a gallon again. I noticed that when gas prices were over $3 a gallon, most of the people complaining were drivers of SUVs and pickup trucks. I personally don't have a problem with gas being $3 or even $4 a gallon. The cheaper the better, but the net effect of higher gas prices would be lower consumption. I still miss the days when $10 would get me over 300 miles with my 89 Honda Civic!
Faulty components can really cause problems for manufacturers. Slashdot recently ran an article about digital cameras failing because of faulty Sony CCD sensors. The problem didn't just affect Sony cameras as several manufacturers used Sony's chips in their products.
Most if not all of those don't like using the term 'African-American' despite them having ancestors from Africa. I have great great grandparents from Poland, however I don't go around calling myself Polish-American because no one in my immediate family is from there. My white American-Citizen mother was born in North Africa to US Citizen parents. Does that make her African-American?
Multiculturalism seems to be working just fine, at least in major US cities such as New York and LA. I've lived in both places, and for the most part everyone gets along very well. Us white folk love Mexican and Chinese food.
Which brings up the question, are there any restrictions on bringing your own guns aboard a cruise ship? Can I just stash my AR-15 in my baggage, along with a few loaded 100 round drum magazines?
I hear the FCC is going to make a ton of money by auctioning off portions of the spectrum that are currently 'wasted' by high bandwidth analog TV.
My mistake. My former co-workers (who are still working there) say they're still not using the smartcard functionality. I also have friends in the Army who say they haven't used the smartcard functionality either, so I (incorrectly) assumed that they weren't really used for anything.
When I worked for the Navy as a Civilian several years ago, I was issued a smartcard ID that was used across the military. The idea was to hold all your personal information on the card including a fingerprint, as well as to be used for logging into their computing systems. In the year that I worked there and as far as I know today the smartcard funtionality isn't used at all. Regular ID cards would function just fine, but I guess they don't look as cool as the cards with the exposed contacts. It was an expensive deployment with a bunch of hype that never materialized into anything useful.
There are some movies that are better seen in the theatre, and we'll gladly go see those. One of my favorite experiences was seeing X-Men II at Grauman's Chinese Theatre. I also enjoy watching some indie films at various small theatres, but my wife doesn't like most of them so I don't get to see many of them.
I don't subscribe to NetFlix because I don't watch that many movies. I would enjoy a reasonably priced movie download service - like the GGGP said, something along the lines of BlockBuster's pricing of $2.99 for a movie. The nearest BlockBuster isn't that far from me, but it's out of the way. To return a movie, it's a good waste of 30 minutes (waiting at red lights, parking, getting out of the car, walking to the drop box, then waiting at more red lights on the way back home). I would love the convenience of downloading a movie rental and not having to return anything, even if it is DRM infested and expires after a week or so.
The only problem is that current DRM methods would most likely require the use of a specialized player, and it would probably be a player that I don't like. In addition, a DVD-quality movie would be HUGE and would take a long time to download even over my 4Mbps cable connection.
Screw the anti-fog snowmobile shield. When will someone use nanotechnology (or any technology) to cure baldness? That's where the money's at.
Despite "Homero's" strange voice in "Los Simpsons," many of my Mexican friends enjoy the show and appreciate all the humor. I would guess that it's more of a hit with native-Spanish speakers living in the US and fully aware of US culture, though I could be wrong.
When you say 'in it' do you mean supporting the RIAA or making/performing music in general? After seeing them in concert, I would believe the latter is true. It was absolutely the worst frickin concert I've ever been to. Aside from the poor acoustics (don't know if it was them or the arena) they really didn't seem to be enjoying themselves on stage. Contrast that with the Beastie Boys - that was one of the best concerts ever. It was so obvious they were having fun on stage (and making a ton of money too) which made it a much better concert.
Since it's almost Halloween, I figured I'd go ahead and post a warning I found while searching for the exact Quayle quote:
Probably the same way that you prove you didn't sign your real signature on a piece of paper. Handwritten signatures can be forged just as easily as a digital signature.
Printer/copier manufacturers are very serious about incorporating anti-counterfit technology such as the ID dots for printers and anti bill-copying technology, but how big of a problem is counterfeiting? How easy is it to make a fake bill with a color copier? Even if you can make a decent looking copy, where do you get the paper? US currency is more like fabric than paper, and it's easy to spot a fake bill printed on standard paper.
The only place I can think of where a printed bill might work is in a vending machine, and most vending machines only accept $1 (or $5 on occasion). Self-checkout machines at Wal-Mart and grocery stores accept $20s or $50s. I'm not familiar with the inner workings of bill-scanning machines like those on vending machines or at self checkouts, but I don't think it would be too difficult to detect fake bills.
So this new transparent aluminum is roughly 9.46 × 10^12 kilometres ahead of glass?
Based on what I've read, the average elevation of the line is something like 13,000 feet, which is still perfectly breathable, especially to those accustomed to thin air. (I live at about 7,000, and spend weeks during the summer above 10000-11000.) It's only going to be on the high passes that you have issues with air. I don't know if a Diesel backup would be very effective at 13,000 feet unless they had a big turbocharger. Power output on a naturally aspirated Diesel engine drops 3% for every 1000 ft. above 3000 ft. altitude.