OK, we have a Dem Majority in Both Houses. Elected mostly as a rebuke to Bush/Fortune 500 company polices for the last 8 or so years.
They have done NOTHING on Iraq.
They give in to spying, give a free pass to companies who have grossly violated rights without any shred of probable cause or, god forbid, a Judges' Order.
There is, in Berlin, the site of the old Gestapo headquarters. There, the history of Nazi Germany is told. The second and third parts of the display concern the Holocaust, and the usual graphic disgusting pictures.
It's not the scary part.
The first part of the display, word for word, and law for law, discusses how the "rule of law" society that was pre war Germany was dismantled. Preventative Detention was how all those "undesirables" were kept in Prison Camps. Judges were selected who were "loyal" (Bush v. Gore anyone ?) Many small words and paragraphs were modified or changed to allow unfettered executive power.
No, Bush is NOT a Nazi, but to ignore the historical parallels is to be blind.
There is now officially NO opposition party. We're screwed.
Steal a song, huge damages with no real burden of proof. Monitor every comm going through a switch, and we'll pour you another drink while we word the amnesty provisions.
Worked in a Burger King many years ago. One of the microwave ovens had a defective off switch in the latching mechanism.
I opened the oven, and microwaved my right index finger, specifically the knuckle. It only took a second, but it hurt in comprehensive ways, and once the door was fully open, the microwaves were off.
The full spectrum pain stopped instantly. It was not a burn, as the RF was only a split second burst. Boy did this hurt. The inside of my knuckle hurt....and stopped.
I can only imagine a full body hit.......shades of the "Agonizer" from the mirror image Star Trek universe (TOS).
If water scenes macroblock, it's digital. If you get fuzziness on letters and text, it's analog.
I was agast at a Direct TV broadcast of a college football game. HDTV format, correct colors, and such huge compression that the screen just blocked whenever there was fast action...what was the point of HDTV then ?
Much like sound has been "dumbed down" for the iPod generation and digital satellite radio, you can expect the providers to send out the lowest level product that the masses will accept.
For the time being, I get HDTV over the air...where if they don't sub'channel too much, it still looks great. Digital is in theory perfect...but then the marketers and suits get involved.
Luckily, here in NYC, we just tossed out congestion pricing, which was the distractor for a full surveillance system, paid for by the congestion charge. Luckily, the legislators outside the golden ring of New York City saw this for what it is, a huge commuter tax.
I want the Germans to run my traffic systems, not the British. WTF is up with this idea of total surveillance, and why would any allegedy free country put this crap up ?
Allegedly....
Please ! I'm a heavy cell user, and have to suffer with Verizon's crappy in house software. Who in god's name designed the caller ID on the outside screen in tiny type and black on deep maroon ? I have good vision and this is a rookie error. worse is that there is no better screen availabe.
Oh, and it defaults to the menu to buy stuff, like tv (I don't have time to watch TV on a cell phone, thanks), or take pictures which I can download for.25 each, or RENT Pac Man for $5 per month ( $60/yr to rent a phone game ??).
Let us not forget that this phone won't talk to an in Car Bluetooth system, because the relevant profiles are disabled by Verizon so you can't work around their media plans. Never Mind that you have removed a huge safety feature and really neat modern convenience.
No, but I get tons of glossy brochures every month encouraging me to down load lame pop music for $2.00 per song !!!!!!!!
Meanwhile, I have an iPod, a real digital camera, and a TV. I would like the phone to pay more attention to MY needs than to be a constant sales pitch for trash outside the mission of business calling.
On the other hand,I did get a Verizon phone for my in-laws, with none of this crap and a big clear black and white display. the sales person said it was "the old persons's phone" and "we get a lot of requests for this". It looked like my regular cell phone from 2 gen ago in cheaper plastic. I'd have bought it for ME except it didn't do Bluetooth headset. I always love how options are parcelled out by corporate america.
I can't ditch Verizon, as they began setting up cells as Bell Tel, and the coverage in my area is way better than anyone else....
You used to borrow one or two albums, tape them in "real time" from vinyl to cassette.
Now you borrow the hard drive and take a copy of your friend's entire album collection.
Kids don't buy albums...if they can't get it from a friend, iTunes will sell ONE song.
Worst, most acts now suck, as the concept of taking a band, letting it grow, and getting a following are out the window. You are a hit or you are gone. If you are a hit, then we are back to iTunes for that one hit and no album sale.
Let us face it, the market is saturated, and the one thing the music industry never, ever expected, took place...a CD burner became available, then affordable, and is now trivial.
I just bought a Mac to replace my dead XP box. This is my second trip to the land of mac, having lived there from the 512 to System 7.6. Now that most of the outside world compatablity issues are moot, I can't see buying another XP, or Vista, while in it's first incarnation. I've been too beat up by Microsoft to buy anything new. The best MS system I ever saw was Win 98 on an "educational system", after XP came out...
Yes, the Mac is more expensive. So is BMW. So is Rolex. The construction quality of the iMac is better than most of the boxes I saw in stores. It was up and running in my application in a whopping 20 minutes, 10 of which were due to a disconnected DSL line.
No, the Mac is not perfect. I was defacto sysadmin on the old Mac systems, so I don't suffer from total fanboy-itis. I'm not a programmer, but can normally figure things out. Going from System 7 to Win 3.1 was a major buzzkill, but now, the look and feel are close....but OSX is what XP wants to be when it grows up.
If you have heavy use by non computer savvy folks (read:family for which you are tech support), the OSX means less tech support, fewer things to be picked up while looking for IM icons, and less time fighting with a computer while said family member stares at you to "make it work".
I respect unix folks, but don't have the time to take it on. I am, like the 99% of the world, depending on store bought, so I have two choices. OSX is better, overall (not perfect) for someone who really does not care to resolve driver conflicts, port issues, malware, worms, and such.
So, another swath of usable bandwidth, line of sight, no skip or ducting issues is given, er, sold to companies who have been trying to regain monopoly status....hobble wifi, kill Skype, etc....
Compare mobile phones in europe to here....a better deal there.
After the usual collusive bidding process, we will be charged through the nose for whatever service comes of it, and it will be only one way...the "internet" abberation has to be stifled.
The best analogy is the railroads in the Midwest before the highway system was built. Local Granges were quite incensed at what they properly saw as a huge middleman markup to get the goods to the city, much more than any actual costs plus a fair profit. The same deal applies here. If we can't kill the internet or DRM it to death, we can at least regulate the content by cost.
While I'm not one of them.....
This target will attract the best and the brightest, for the challenge of the hack.
The successful person will post results in such a way that he/she cannot be traced.
The DRM model fails-even for the mildly informed computer user. (Those who open unknown attachments will always be with us)
Meanwhile, with two incompatable formats, my money stays in my wallet.
How much money have Sony and Toshiba lost on this debacle so far ?
I must admit I am very entertained by this...although not on my TV set !
Call Quality ? where ? When the radio channels begin to fill, you can (or can't) hear the phone co increase compression to a point of ridiculousness. While they can claim they didn't drop the call, it's so bit-starved that I can barely hear what is going on. Add to that various chops to the call and dropouts, and I save the wire phone for the really serious conversations.
I find that my ham radio, or my CB, is often clearer than cell phones. If a guy from the other side of the world is clearer on a fairly simple ham set than my wife from across town, then the company has to do better.
OOOh, I forgot...I live in the US where cell phone companies can't be easily changed by sim card.....darn.
Many years ago, as a student rep at Boston U, we though about hiring a popular band for one of our student affairs. We were advised by several band managers that even tho we could afford the band (s) they would not play our, or any school.
The reason was that if you played schools, the concert promoters (Boston, 1979-1983) would not hire you to play the big venues. This suddenly explained why once a band broke, you could never see them anywhere but the big arena.
I agree that copy right holders are entitled to be paid for their work. What is happening here is more monopoly strongarming than copyright protection.
The internet is the single greatest thing to happen to content since Gutenberg. Recall that prior to him, reading was kept to the Church and King...only elites could read...and they liked it that way.
OOHHH, make the internet just go away ! Pleazze ! Let us return to the day that we owned the radio station, the promoters, the concert hall, and the bands. Our old reliable system of "screw the desperate band", play the music "via cocaine and cash incentives" on the radio, and "fill the concert halls we control with our band", ending with "selling you the authorized T shirt". I'll even toss in a contribution to the "home taping kills music" fund. Please make that nasty internet go away.
sadly, HDTV is wasted on gore and violence. I don't need to see the eaten corpse to get the murder mystery rolling.
Some bodacious ta-ta's ? nope, can't see that. we can see a head ripped off, but we can't see anything sexy ?
It's almost like they are trying to de-sensitize us toward gore. why ?
YOU DON'T GET TO CHOOSE THE BOX. THE CABLE PROVIDER DOES ! This was what cablecard was about. I have a Sony HDD HD recorder-Sony and LG came up with full blown HD DVR's with cablecard input, and they were strangely taken out of production, with no North American Successors.
You can RENT a box in perpetuity from your cable provider, though. Just like the old Bell Tel Co, the rental of the equipment was a huge hidden source of profit.
Just Like the old Bell Tel, they don't want anyone else's "devices" in the network.
about as much as the Bush "administration" cares about the people of the US.
Bush wasn't joking the day he addressed a fund raiser full of Fortune 500 CEO's as "my base". Beyond that, you don't exist to them save as cheap labor.
Bizarre that anyone is amazed by this. My wife and I got hooked on an Aussie show, which ran on a minor cable channel. When it stopped, I was able to buy it from an Aussie website, and it was shipped to my CONUS home inside of a week.
A region free DVD player closed the deal, and the PAL sourced video looks darn good after conversion.
Copyright holder paid.
Happy viewer.
Too Bad about that region crap.
In Mexico City, on sundays, when the bricks and mortar shops are closed, the open air street market has every sort of software and game for a kind of universal asking price of $5. Be it Word or Photoshop Gold Plated edition, $5.
I saw photocopied manuals with it-and every movie from every region, also $5.
I think the pr0n was cheaper.
Interestingly, Sony makes an HD DVR, but it is in "limited" production. The Sony HDD 250/500 will accept a CableCard, the technology that the cable companies have been forced to eat, and are supporting...not so well.
The concept is you buy your own box, and stuff the cablecard in. Now, this does not work for Satellite providers, but does very well off the air, as I get my HDTV (benefits...for a $75 dollar investment, free HD and no HD Lite issues)
Oddly, Sony does not list the box in the catalog, but you can occasionally find it in the sony clearance centers if you know where to look, and you will frequently see it in big box stores, providing an HD signal to the SXRD sets. The staff will advise you it is not for sale.
(Feel free to demo 720p vs. 1080i via the resolution button on the front of the unit...scares the sales staff when you get to 480 p/i).
No one else makes a standalone HD DVR box which can hook to cable, and even they don't officially sell it except as "remanufactured".
What gives here ? Worse, no one else is pushing.
Here's a market waiting to be served.....
Oh, I forgot...all the content providers made the equipment makers bow down in fealty, and any HD DVR should be sold at the highest possible price to a captive audience. A friend in NYC has told me Time Warner cable disabled his 30 second skip button on his box.
Silly me...I thought a legal product with a demand would find willing sellers...but the entertaiment business is not capitalism, as much as monopoly.
So, following the model of the old telephone company, rent the equipment in perpetuity, so that wall phone eventually costs $5,000.00.
My HD DVR cost $300 reman, and was listed at $700.00 new. Even at the $700.00 price, it pays back quickly....but you are not given that choice.
Wonder Why ?
LG made a box, and stopped.
Sony made a box, and stopped.
Who is having coffee with who ?
I'm a high minute user of mobile phones for business.
My Verizon V710, the model with crippled bluetooth, has a camera, can download ring tones, and has a system which would charge me a quarter for each picture I email. It can also web browse.
Which of these features do I use ??
NONE !
I wanted to use the phone to synch to my car, but luckily found out Verizon crippled bluetooth prior to spending megabux at the car dealer for the phone package.
Pay for a picture...not
buy a ringtone ? are you guys tripping ?
the video game idea was cool, but when I found out it was $5 per month for tetris, I passed.
Just make the phone work.....don't sell me crap, don't make it my web browser, don't ever, ever send me an ad on a PAY service I spend a lot of money on....you don't need advert support, you already have paying customer.
Now, if you'd figure out a way to let me synch the phone to my Palm device, I'd pay for that, but that's not happening...it would be too useful and too many rights holders would have to agree.
You can get a DVR. The Sony HDD 250/500 is a wonderful device. I have two of them. Interestingly, they are not being promoted, since once you buy it, you don't need to pay a subscription fee, and the device is not at the mercy of a content provider.
Downside...it is sony, but it is really the other half of my HDTV.
You'll have to look around...sony uses them in big box stores to demo HDTV, but you can't get them over the counter...some sony outlet stores will sell them but you need to know to ask.
What is the surprise ? HD shows all, flaws and benefits. The rush to plastic surgeons by the news media should have been a clue to the studios that putting the film in a player, running the transfer camera and going to lunch would no longer cut it.
Since the new screens don't allow the blur and color shift we are all used to, and which hides a lot of errors, the studios will have to spend some money on transfers. Now, since they can't take that from an artist's "cut", they will try to cheap out, but they can't.
The worst DVD I ever saw was a 1st gen transfer of 2010-even on SD they got a lot better. Give it time...this is still all in beta rollout.
And, no Mr. Content Provider, I'm not buying either system till there is a "winner".
Recently one of my kids did a family tree project for school. We found and used her great grandfather's German Nazi era internal passport, which all Germans had to carry./sarcasm on
I'm happy to see this wonderful idea has come back up...and this time for the same reason, to protect us from the outsiders (find:Jew...replace:Terrorist)./sarcasm off.
I'm preparing the kids for a world where being tracked is normal, not a sign of involvement in Criminal activity.
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OK, we have a Dem Majority in Both Houses. Elected mostly as a rebuke to Bush/Fortune 500 company polices for the last 8 or so years. They have done NOTHING on Iraq. They give in to spying, give a free pass to companies who have grossly violated rights without any shred of probable cause or, god forbid, a Judges' Order. There is, in Berlin, the site of the old Gestapo headquarters. There, the history of Nazi Germany is told. The second and third parts of the display concern the Holocaust, and the usual graphic disgusting pictures. It's not the scary part. The first part of the display, word for word, and law for law, discusses how the "rule of law" society that was pre war Germany was dismantled. Preventative Detention was how all those "undesirables" were kept in Prison Camps. Judges were selected who were "loyal" (Bush v. Gore anyone ?) Many small words and paragraphs were modified or changed to allow unfettered executive power. No, Bush is NOT a Nazi, but to ignore the historical parallels is to be blind. There is now officially NO opposition party. We're screwed. Steal a song, huge damages with no real burden of proof. Monitor every comm going through a switch, and we'll pour you another drink while we word the amnesty provisions.
Worked in a Burger King many years ago. One of the microwave ovens had a defective off switch in the latching mechanism. I opened the oven, and microwaved my right index finger, specifically the knuckle. It only took a second, but it hurt in comprehensive ways, and once the door was fully open, the microwaves were off. The full spectrum pain stopped instantly. It was not a burn, as the RF was only a split second burst. Boy did this hurt. The inside of my knuckle hurt....and stopped. I can only imagine a full body hit.......shades of the "Agonizer" from the mirror image Star Trek universe (TOS).
the riaa is a front organization, taking all the bad press, and leaving ":the record company:" out of the negative spotlight
If water scenes macroblock, it's digital. If you get fuzziness on letters and text, it's analog. I was agast at a Direct TV broadcast of a college football game. HDTV format, correct colors, and such huge compression that the screen just blocked whenever there was fast action...what was the point of HDTV then ? Much like sound has been "dumbed down" for the iPod generation and digital satellite radio, you can expect the providers to send out the lowest level product that the masses will accept. For the time being, I get HDTV over the air...where if they don't sub'channel too much, it still looks great. Digital is in theory perfect...but then the marketers and suits get involved.
Luckily, here in NYC, we just tossed out congestion pricing, which was the distractor for a full surveillance system, paid for by the congestion charge. Luckily, the legislators outside the golden ring of New York City saw this for what it is, a huge commuter tax. I want the Germans to run my traffic systems, not the British. WTF is up with this idea of total surveillance, and why would any allegedy free country put this crap up ? Allegedly....
Please ! I'm a heavy cell user, and have to suffer with Verizon's crappy in house software. Who in god's name designed the caller ID on the outside screen in tiny type and black on deep maroon ? I have good vision and this is a rookie error. worse is that there is no better screen availabe. Oh, and it defaults to the menu to buy stuff, like tv (I don't have time to watch TV on a cell phone, thanks), or take pictures which I can download for .25 each, or RENT Pac Man for $5 per month ( $60 /yr to rent a phone game ??).
Let us not forget that this phone won't talk to an in Car Bluetooth system, because the relevant profiles are disabled by Verizon so you can't work around their media plans. Never Mind that you have removed a huge safety feature and really neat modern convenience.
No, but I get tons of glossy brochures every month encouraging me to down load lame pop music for $2.00 per song !!!!!!!!
Meanwhile, I have an iPod, a real digital camera, and a TV. I would like the phone to pay more attention to MY needs than to be a constant sales pitch for trash outside the mission of business calling.
On the other hand,I did get a Verizon phone for my in-laws, with none of this crap and a big clear black and white display. the sales person said it was "the old persons's phone" and "we get a lot of requests for this". It looked like my regular cell phone from 2 gen ago in cheaper plastic. I'd have bought it for ME except it didn't do Bluetooth headset. I always love how options are parcelled out by corporate america.
I can't ditch Verizon, as they began setting up cells as Bell Tel, and the coverage in my area is way better than anyone else....
Back catalog stuff is no longer selling.
You used to borrow one or two albums, tape them in "real time" from vinyl to cassette.
Now you borrow the hard drive and take a copy of your friend's entire album collection.
Kids don't buy albums...if they can't get it from a friend, iTunes will sell ONE song.
Worst, most acts now suck, as the concept of taking a band, letting it grow, and getting a following are out the window. You are a hit or you are gone. If you are a hit, then we are back to iTunes for that one hit and no album sale.
Let us face it, the market is saturated, and the one thing the music industry never, ever expected, took place...a CD burner became available, then affordable, and is now trivial.
My XP box died. Time for a new one. Aack ! All Vista. New Vista. Bought an iMac. Upgrade ! As my windoze boxes die out, they will be replaced by Macs.
I just bought a Mac to replace my dead XP box. This is my second trip to the land of mac, having lived there from the 512 to System 7.6. Now that most of the outside world compatablity issues are moot, I can't see buying another XP, or Vista, while in it's first incarnation. I've been too beat up by Microsoft to buy anything new. The best MS system I ever saw was Win 98 on an "educational system", after XP came out... Yes, the Mac is more expensive. So is BMW. So is Rolex. The construction quality of the iMac is better than most of the boxes I saw in stores. It was up and running in my application in a whopping 20 minutes, 10 of which were due to a disconnected DSL line. No, the Mac is not perfect. I was defacto sysadmin on the old Mac systems, so I don't suffer from total fanboy-itis. I'm not a programmer, but can normally figure things out. Going from System 7 to Win 3.1 was a major buzzkill, but now, the look and feel are close....but OSX is what XP wants to be when it grows up. If you have heavy use by non computer savvy folks (read:family for which you are tech support), the OSX means less tech support, fewer things to be picked up while looking for IM icons, and less time fighting with a computer while said family member stares at you to "make it work". I respect unix folks, but don't have the time to take it on. I am, like the 99% of the world, depending on store bought, so I have two choices. OSX is better, overall (not perfect) for someone who really does not care to resolve driver conflicts, port issues, malware, worms, and such.
So, another swath of usable bandwidth, line of sight, no skip or ducting issues is given, er, sold to companies who have been trying to regain monopoly status....hobble wifi, kill Skype, etc....
Compare mobile phones in europe to here....a better deal there.
After the usual collusive bidding process, we will be charged through the nose for whatever service comes of it, and it will be only one way...the "internet" abberation has to be stifled.
The best analogy is the railroads in the Midwest before the highway system was built. Local Granges were quite incensed at what they properly saw as a huge middleman markup to get the goods to the city, much more than any actual costs plus a fair profit. The same deal applies here. If we can't kill the internet or DRM it to death, we can at least regulate the content by cost.
History repeats itself.
My XP box dies....can't do vista while in first draft. Go mac....so happy. Have to buy Word for Mac...sacrilege.
While I'm not one of them..... This target will attract the best and the brightest, for the challenge of the hack. The successful person will post results in such a way that he/she cannot be traced. The DRM model fails-even for the mildly informed computer user. (Those who open unknown attachments will always be with us) Meanwhile, with two incompatable formats, my money stays in my wallet. How much money have Sony and Toshiba lost on this debacle so far ? I must admit I am very entertained by this...although not on my TV set !
Call Quality ? where ? When the radio channels begin to fill, you can (or can't) hear the phone co increase compression to a point of ridiculousness. While they can claim they didn't drop the call, it's so bit-starved that I can barely hear what is going on. Add to that various chops to the call and dropouts, and I save the wire phone for the really serious conversations. I find that my ham radio, or my CB, is often clearer than cell phones. If a guy from the other side of the world is clearer on a fairly simple ham set than my wife from across town, then the company has to do better. OOOh, I forgot...I live in the US where cell phone companies can't be easily changed by sim card.....darn.
Many years ago, as a student rep at Boston U, we though about hiring a popular band for one of our student affairs. We were advised by several band managers that even tho we could afford the band (s) they would not play our, or any school. The reason was that if you played schools, the concert promoters (Boston, 1979-1983) would not hire you to play the big venues. This suddenly explained why once a band broke, you could never see them anywhere but the big arena. I agree that copy right holders are entitled to be paid for their work. What is happening here is more monopoly strongarming than copyright protection. The internet is the single greatest thing to happen to content since Gutenberg. Recall that prior to him, reading was kept to the Church and King...only elites could read...and they liked it that way.
OOHHH, make the internet just go away ! Pleazze ! Let us return to the day that we owned the radio station, the promoters, the concert hall, and the bands. Our old reliable system of "screw the desperate band", play the music "via cocaine and cash incentives" on the radio, and "fill the concert halls we control with our band", ending with "selling you the authorized T shirt". I'll even toss in a contribution to the "home taping kills music" fund. Please make that nasty internet go away.
sadly, HDTV is wasted on gore and violence. I don't need to see the eaten corpse to get the murder mystery rolling. Some bodacious ta-ta's ? nope, can't see that. we can see a head ripped off, but we can't see anything sexy ? It's almost like they are trying to de-sensitize us toward gore. why ?
YOU DON'T GET TO CHOOSE THE BOX. THE CABLE PROVIDER DOES ! This was what cablecard was about. I have a Sony HDD HD recorder-Sony and LG came up with full blown HD DVR's with cablecard input, and they were strangely taken out of production, with no North American Successors.
You can RENT a box in perpetuity from your cable provider, though. Just like the old Bell Tel Co, the rental of the equipment was a huge hidden source of profit.
Just Like the old Bell Tel, they don't want anyone else's "devices" in the network.
about as much as the Bush "administration" cares about the people of the US. Bush wasn't joking the day he addressed a fund raiser full of Fortune 500 CEO's as "my base". Beyond that, you don't exist to them save as cheap labor.
Bizarre that anyone is amazed by this. My wife and I got hooked on an Aussie show, which ran on a minor cable channel. When it stopped, I was able to buy it from an Aussie website, and it was shipped to my CONUS home inside of a week. A region free DVD player closed the deal, and the PAL sourced video looks darn good after conversion. Copyright holder paid. Happy viewer. Too Bad about that region crap.
In Mexico City, on sundays, when the bricks and mortar shops are closed, the open air street market has every sort of software and game for a kind of universal asking price of $5. Be it Word or Photoshop Gold Plated edition, $5. I saw photocopied manuals with it-and every movie from every region, also $5. I think the pr0n was cheaper.
Interestingly, Sony makes an HD DVR, but it is in "limited" production. The Sony HDD 250/500 will accept a CableCard, the technology that the cable companies have been forced to eat, and are supporting...not so well. The concept is you buy your own box, and stuff the cablecard in. Now, this does not work for Satellite providers, but does very well off the air, as I get my HDTV (benefits...for a $75 dollar investment, free HD and no HD Lite issues) Oddly, Sony does not list the box in the catalog, but you can occasionally find it in the sony clearance centers if you know where to look, and you will frequently see it in big box stores, providing an HD signal to the SXRD sets. The staff will advise you it is not for sale. (Feel free to demo 720p vs. 1080i via the resolution button on the front of the unit...scares the sales staff when you get to 480 p/i). No one else makes a standalone HD DVR box which can hook to cable, and even they don't officially sell it except as "remanufactured". What gives here ? Worse, no one else is pushing. Here's a market waiting to be served..... Oh, I forgot...all the content providers made the equipment makers bow down in fealty, and any HD DVR should be sold at the highest possible price to a captive audience. A friend in NYC has told me Time Warner cable disabled his 30 second skip button on his box. Silly me...I thought a legal product with a demand would find willing sellers...but the entertaiment business is not capitalism, as much as monopoly. So, following the model of the old telephone company, rent the equipment in perpetuity, so that wall phone eventually costs $5,000.00. My HD DVR cost $300 reman, and was listed at $700.00 new. Even at the $700.00 price, it pays back quickly....but you are not given that choice. Wonder Why ? LG made a box, and stopped. Sony made a box, and stopped. Who is having coffee with who ?
I'm a high minute user of mobile phones for business. My Verizon V710, the model with crippled bluetooth, has a camera, can download ring tones, and has a system which would charge me a quarter for each picture I email. It can also web browse. Which of these features do I use ?? NONE ! I wanted to use the phone to synch to my car, but luckily found out Verizon crippled bluetooth prior to spending megabux at the car dealer for the phone package. Pay for a picture ...not
buy a ringtone ? are you guys tripping ?
the video game idea was cool, but when I found out it was $5 per month for tetris, I passed.
Just make the phone work.....don't sell me crap, don't make it my web browser, don't ever, ever send me an ad on a PAY service I spend a lot of money on....you don't need advert support, you already have paying customer.
Now, if you'd figure out a way to let me synch the phone to my Palm device, I'd pay for that, but that's not happening...it would be too useful and too many rights holders would have to agree.
You can get a DVR. The Sony HDD 250/500 is a wonderful device. I have two of them. Interestingly, they are not being promoted, since once you buy it, you don't need to pay a subscription fee, and the device is not at the mercy of a content provider.
Downside...it is sony, but it is really the other half of my HDTV.
You'll have to look around...sony uses them in big box stores to demo HDTV, but you can't get them over the counter...some sony outlet stores will sell them but you need to know to ask.
Why are DVR's not being sold all over.....?
What is the surprise ? HD shows all, flaws and benefits. The rush to plastic surgeons by the news media should have been a clue to the studios that putting the film in a player, running the transfer camera and going to lunch would no longer cut it. Since the new screens don't allow the blur and color shift we are all used to, and which hides a lot of errors, the studios will have to spend some money on transfers. Now, since they can't take that from an artist's "cut", they will try to cheap out, but they can't. The worst DVD I ever saw was a 1st gen transfer of 2010-even on SD they got a lot better. Give it time...this is still all in beta rollout. And, no Mr. Content Provider, I'm not buying either system till there is a "winner".
Recently one of my kids did a family tree project for school. We found and used her great grandfather's German Nazi era internal passport, which all Germans had to carry. /sarcasm on
I'm happy to see this wonderful idea has come back up...and this time for the same reason, to protect us from the outsiders (find:Jew...replace:Terrorist). /sarcasm off.
I'm preparing the kids for a world where being tracked is normal, not a sign of involvement in Criminal activity.