All HD you see is compressed. Even OTA. OTA is compressed with MPEG-2. And frankly, it's overcompressed. It looks good most of the time, but watch a BluRay some time. BluRay has 3-4x the bandwidth and a better codec and the difference on moving scenes is night and day.
Yes, I had a data plan on that plan. And I activated it. I WAS NOT ROAMING except in France. I bought a UK SIM in the UK and used a local's Maltese SIM in Malta.
Maybe you're confusing EDGE with GPRS or UMTS?
I'm not making this up. Europe went straight to 3G (partly because of the ridiculous amounts of money they overpaid for the spectrum) and EDGE coverage is spotty at best.
First of all, in many areas of the country, AT&T (merged) sold the Cingular towers off to T-Mobile (this was the case in California). They only used the AT&T towers.
There was a complex migration, you could read a lot about it by the people who tracked the switchover on howardforums.com.
The only thing that you say that does make sense is about your reception. If you had an old AT&T "Blue" SIM, your phone would not access any Cingular towers. But the only thing you had to do to fix it was to get a new "Orange" SIM (which were literally orange). If you didn't didn't do this soon after the merger, you started to see reduced coverage rather quickly. A new SIM should be free if you complain about your coverage to AT&T's customer line (not a store, the stores always want to put you under contract as there is money it in for them). But even if you couldn't swing that, a new SIM can be purchased for $20, no contract extension necessary.
Three months ago. In England, France and Malta (!).
And EDGE wasn't rolled out in any significant amount, even when the iPhone did come out. This is part of the reason the iPhone didn't sell well in Europe before it had 3G. And who can blame them? Surely they knew Apple would have a 3G phone soon (since Europe had had 3G phones for years already).
You should get some more news sources. Trusting just one (including slashdot) is a recipe for disaster.
For example, for news about airline stuff, airliners.net is far better. There is a thread actually explaining what happened here and why they were not rebooked immediately. It's quite informative and less sensationalistic.
Besides, slashdot pisses their pants over the iPhone every 5 minutes, and it's a closed system. For some reason they're anti DRM but pro Steve Jobs walled gardens. Slashdot isn't my source for info on rights erosions.
It's as dead as VHS. There are no new releases on either.
Just because you find discs around you can buy doesn't mean it isn't dead. Also, my understanding is Blockbuster's HD-DVDs aren't used. The ones I see at Fry's sure aren't. If I wanted leftover older movies at $8, I'd be gassed with HD-DVD I guess. But I don't really. The good movies (like Hot Fuzz) sold out quickly when HD-DVD was killed, and the rest are dregs. BTW, dregs aren't $30 on BluRay (except for from Fox), they are $14-$18.
I've had my 360 die 4 times. The last time, MS wouldn't replace it (optical drive went bad, long story but they screwed me, IMHO). Good customer service is no replacement for making a product that actually works.
The amount of film shot on those days before digital cameras must have been astounding.
Anyway, I was there on October 2nd this year, and while there, the Queen's Guard band played a Star Wars medley (including the Cantina music!) John Williams might be an O.B.E. by now too (heck, John Barry is), except he's American.
>Flor is generally not dimable. Even those that claim to be really are barely and cost a fortune. Barely is an overstatment. Generally they can be dimmed down to 25% or so. This is not be sufficient for all cases, but isn't "barely". And if you are paying a fortune, you are a lousy shopper. That's your own fault.
>Flor saves NO MONEY when dimmed, even if you can find expensive dimable ones. Wrong. See my response below to your nonsense.
>Flor bulbs do not fit in all fixtures, especially decorative ones and small ones. True.
>Flor bulbs are UGLY in many types of fixtures, period. True. Although many might be a bit of an overstatement, because most fixtures hide the bulb. In ones that show the bulb, they can be quite ugly.
>Flor FIXTURES are UGLY in many types of applications. I don't know what you mean.
>Flor light is not pleasing to many people- it is too white/blue or harsh. Wrong. There are several colors of CFLs available. If want the yellow of incandescent, you can have it with CFLs.
>Flor fixtures often emit lots of RFI. Lots is an overstatement. They do emit RFI, like anything with a switching power supply in them. In my room, I have a laptop, Mac Mini, LCD TV, audio amplifer (it's class D, so it's easily the biggest switching power supply I have), DirecTV receiver, Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 with switching power supplies in them. And I didn't even count the ones in my two mice or keyboards I have. Or for that matter, my phone and two bluetooth headsets here. So what's one more switcher going to do?
>Flor fixtures often emit noise. No they don't. Modern fluorescent fixtures (T8 or any funny shape like Ds or CFLs) use power supplies that switch at over 10,000Hz instead of the old 60Hz and thus they don't make noise.
>Flor lamps are not instantly on. If you get a good quality CFL, it comes on about as quickly as an incandescent. Less than 0.2s. You cannot remove your hand from the lightswitch before the light comes on no matter how fast you are. If you get an older or poor quality CFL, it might take seconds, which sucks. The one in my bedroom takes forever to turn on and I hate it, but I can't bring myself to replace it before it wears out. And it's been 5 years already.
>Flor lamps are also not instantly 100% bright, many taking MINUTES to reach full brightness. This depends. They are not instantly 100% bright, true. Older and poor lamps take minutes to reach full brightness. Like the Panasonic in my computer room and my utility room. I call these my joke lamps (and I paid a fortune for them!). They're very dim anyway (so they'd fit in enclosed fixures) so even at full brightness they are dim. Again, these are many years old, so their replacements won't have this problem. Recent CFLs go to over 85% brightness within a half second and reach 100% in under 15 seconds.
Your list is mostly rubbish.
Do yourself a favor. Before you post any more nonsense, go to Home Depot and buy a single n:Vision (previously Commercial Electric) CFL. Buy the 2700K (orangey incandescent "white") color temperature. Then go try it out. See how fast it turns on. Listen to it not buzz. Check how the color matches incandescent. Go ahead, put it in an enclosed fixture (if you can find one it fits in) and ask your friends to switch it on and off and tell you if they notice anything funny (don't tell them it is a CFL ahead of time).
I've used dimmable fluorescent torchieres (indirect, like the halogens people are used to) for about 4 years now. I have personally connected a Kill-A-Watt to mine to measure the power usage.
In fact, I'll do it again right now.
At full bore, it uses 56W. This is when outputting the same light as a 300W halogen would (and note halogens are more efficient than regular incandescents). Fully dimmed, it uses 16W. It is much dimmer in this case, I'd say about 1/4 brightness is a good estimate. As you mention, many people would like to dim it further, but you cannot.
Note that the VA usage is much higher because on this thing (as with many cheap fluorescents), the power factor correction is poor to non-existent. This runs about a 0.55 PF.
Now it's possible dimmable CFLs are different, but unlikely, as they use similar ballasts to this. And again, I should mention, I've had these lamps for about 4 years, so your idea that this is a new development in the last year is hogwash.
So, in short, your idea that dimming fluorescents doesn't save power is complete nonsense. I reduce my power usage to 1/6th (84%!) at both full and dimmed.
In CFLs, if you want yellower light, you can have it. Home Depot stocks 3 colors of CFL lights, incandescent (which I find too yellow except in rooms with a lot of wood), daylight (which is too blue for many uses) and an in between which I like a lot. I have a CFL in my porch lamp which no one has guessed is not an incandescent because it is the same color light, starts instantly, and is in an enclosed fixture so you can't see it is funny shaped. If you did examine the color spectra you'd see it does have a line spectra, so the color rendition isn't great in some cases. But that never comes up on my porch.
The government isn't dictating CFLs, it is dictating an efficiency level that incandescent cannot meet. If you want to use HID, go ahead. If you want to use LED, fine. If you want to use CFL, that's great. But wasting energy willy nilly isn't one of the options.
It would be really great if people like you would stop spreading lies like you do above. It's okay to believe bullshit if you want, but spreading it as truth is very hurtful to the overall level of public understanding.
CableCARD exists. TiVos use it. The failure of it to take over has nothing to do with the open market. It's because cable is not an open market. CableCARD was forced on the cable companies by the FCC and they didn't want it, so they responded by doing the worst possible job in supporting it.
Friends who have TiVos mention having to wait almost two weeks for a CableCARD "install" where a guy shows up with a card and just puts it in your TiVo. When they easily could have just given you the card on the spot.
H1B was fixed so that people can change jobs many years ago. I hired a person 3 years ago by transferring his H-1B. Your other measures have not been considered or adopted though.
Note that changing jobs during green card application (which many people are in while on H-1B) does cause somewhat of a reset in green card processing. So that's still a disincentive to change jobs.
Ah, there we go again. Just because hulu isn't available in your area, that means that the people putting their content on it (NBC Universal) don't "understand the internet".
The fact is that NBC is out to make money. They can put stuff on Hulu in the US and make money. But overseas, they already sold the rights to someone else (for money), and thus they don't have the option of offering the content on the internet in those countries.
So, if the content you want isn't available in your country on the internet (or any given site), bitch at the company that owns the rights in your country as not getting it.
I am in the US and I use my PVR to get my content. But that's because it's higher quality (relatively high rate HD quality). It isn't simpler. Hulu is simpler than setting your PVR. For example, if you have a DirecTV PVR, and you set a season pass for Survivor, it didn't record the finale last week because it wasn't listed as part of the season. Yeah, you can go back and fix the recording ahead of time (I did), but if you didn't, you missed it. But with Hulu, regardless of whether you figured this out ahead of time, the program is there to watch when you're ready to watch it.
Oh, so you say you can watch them at any time after they come out?
Wow, you can do so on Hulu too. Because unlike Bittorrent, it downloads it in order and you can watch it within a few seconds of the stream starting.
And all this without installing codec packs or putting utorrent in your startup folder! And the encodes are always good because the network makes them themselves.
You have a method you like. Great. There's no need to spread bullshit about other methods like Hulu.
They're both good methods. Hulu is slightly simpler and it's legal, but unfortunately, unlike using bittorrent, you never have the file to keep, so you have to stream it again later (and it may not be there later). Also, of course, on hulu, you have to watch ads too.
But if someone else wants to watch it in hulu, what's it to you? Why do you have to misrepresent other methods as being tougher than yours?
For hulu you just go there, click about 3 times and you're watching in your browser.
With bittorrent, you have to install a couple programs, a couple codecs and then still once in a while it turns out the program you downloaded was a crappy encode and you have to go get another one.
I do agree the bittorrent route is pretty easy and it has the advantage that you have the file forever instead of having to stream it again, but it's not the easiest method, which is why hulu has taken off.
I rather expected to see this host of posts on here.
Same as when NBC pulls their shows from YouTube. The internets immediately surmised that NBC didn't know what they were doing, didn't understand the importance of internet viewing and only YouTube can deliver video over the internets.
The pundits (including slashdot pundits) did a great job of making a straw man, but were very wrong on what NBC understood and where they were headed. Hulu has been a huge success and most importantly to NBC Universal, it delivers them revenue.
It's very possible that people on slashdot are jumping to the wrong conclusions again.
Games don't "allow" you to resell them. The LAW allows you to sell them. Even if the EULA says you cannot, you can.
Why are you bragging Steam lets me play at my friends house? This is some kind of advantage? I can take my game DVD to anybody's house and play there with non-Steam games.
Steam limits you more than you are with a non-DRM game, or even one with a conventional copy protection that doesn't tie all your games to a single account.
You cannot dim an LED array with a simple resistor. Well, not in a commercial application.
There are several problems with it, and the math gets pretty complex.
But basically, the only way reasonably to reduce LED brightness is through PWM (flickering). So most systems use PWM, but at a very high frequency (over 1KHz). To the eye, it is not noticeably flickering.
I do agree Cadillac's LED taillights are ridiculous. Honestly, they should be banned. They are too distracting.
Slashdot Mirror
"Eire and Poland"?
Why half pedantic?
You mean Eire and Polska I guess. Or as most of us know then, Ireland and Poland.
All HD you see is compressed. Even OTA. OTA is compressed with MPEG-2. And frankly, it's overcompressed. It looks good most of the time, but watch a BluRay some time. BluRay has 3-4x the bandwidth and a better codec and the difference on moving scenes is night and day.
I don't want a large, I want a liter of cola.
My provider in the UK was Talk Mobile, which uses Vodafone's network.
I forget who the provider was in Malta, but they also used Vodafone's network.
I'm not crazy. Western Europe went straight to 3G, there is little or no EDGE coverage.
Yes, I had a data plan on that plan. And I activated it. I WAS NOT ROAMING except in France. I bought a UK SIM in the UK and used a local's Maltese SIM in Malta.
Maybe you're confusing EDGE with GPRS or UMTS?
I'm not making this up. Europe went straight to 3G (partly because of the ridiculous amounts of money they overpaid for the spectrum) and EDGE coverage is spotty at best.
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/0,1000000085,39250156,00.htm
That's incorrect.
First of all, in many areas of the country, AT&T (merged) sold the Cingular towers off to T-Mobile (this was the case in California). They only used the AT&T towers.
There was a complex migration, you could read a lot about it by the people who tracked the switchover on howardforums.com.
The only thing that you say that does make sense is about your reception. If you had an old AT&T "Blue" SIM, your phone would not access any Cingular towers. But the only thing you had to do to fix it was to get a new "Orange" SIM (which were literally orange). If you didn't didn't do this soon after the merger, you started to see reduced coverage rather quickly. A new SIM should be free if you complain about your coverage to AT&T's customer line (not a store, the stores always want to put you under contract as there is money it in for them). But even if you couldn't swing that, a new SIM can be purchased for $20, no contract extension necessary.
Three months ago. In England, France and Malta (!).
And EDGE wasn't rolled out in any significant amount, even when the iPhone did come out. This is part of the reason the iPhone didn't sell well in Europe before it had 3G. And who can blame them? Surely they knew Apple would have a 3G phone soon (since Europe had had 3G phones for years already).
And it's UMTS, not UTMS.
I had my 2G (quad band) phone in Europe. I only ever got EDGE once, and that was in the complete sticks.
The rest of the time, I only got GPRS. This is because that's all that was offered, GPRS and 3G.
So far from being an idyllic solution, it seems in Europe the outcome is even more decided for you.
You should get some more news sources. Trusting just one (including slashdot) is a recipe for disaster.
For example, for news about airline stuff, airliners.net is far better. There is a thread actually explaining what happened here and why they were not rebooked immediately. It's quite informative and less sensationalistic.
Besides, slashdot pisses their pants over the iPhone every 5 minutes, and it's a closed system. For some reason they're anti DRM but pro Steve Jobs walled gardens. Slashdot isn't my source for info on rights erosions.
Where's the online aspect of this story?
There are about 30 other news outlets that aren't nerd-oriented that are carrying this story well. What is slashdot adding by featuring it?
Why should I have to do either?
This whole article is about the cable company not airing the channels anymore because they don't want to pay what Warner asks.
By the same lesson we learned on here, they should just continue to air the channels and not pay. Paying is clearly optional.
It's out there, it's possible to do. Why should I get cable when I can steal programs instead? For that matter, why don't I just steal cable?
I wish I had known about the value proposition of stealing a month ago, I would have saved a lot on my Xmas shopping.
HD-DVD isn't "dead", it's dead.
It's as dead as VHS. There are no new releases on either.
Just because you find discs around you can buy doesn't mean it isn't dead. Also, my understanding is Blockbuster's HD-DVDs aren't used. The ones I see at Fry's sure aren't. If I wanted leftover older movies at $8, I'd be gassed with HD-DVD I guess. But I don't really. The good movies (like Hot Fuzz) sold out quickly when HD-DVD was killed, and the rest are dregs. BTW, dregs aren't $30 on BluRay (except for from Fox), they are $14-$18.
I've had my 360 die 4 times. The last time, MS wouldn't replace it (optical drive went bad, long story but they screwed me, IMHO). Good customer service is no replacement for making a product that actually works.
The amount of film shot on those days before digital cameras must have been astounding.
Anyway, I was there on October 2nd this year, and while there, the Queen's Guard band played a Star Wars medley (including the Cantina music!) John Williams might be an O.B.E. by now too (heck, John Barry is), except he's American.
>Flor is generally not dimable. Even those that claim to be really are barely and cost a fortune.
Barely is an overstatment. Generally they can be dimmed down to 25% or so. This is not be sufficient for all cases, but isn't "barely". And if you are paying a fortune, you are a lousy shopper. That's your own fault.
>Flor saves NO MONEY when dimmed, even if you can find expensive dimable ones.
Wrong. See my response below to your nonsense.
>Flor bulbs do not fit in all fixtures, especially decorative ones and small ones.
True.
>Flor bulbs are UGLY in many types of fixtures, period.
True. Although many might be a bit of an overstatement, because most fixtures hide the bulb. In ones that show the bulb, they can be quite ugly.
>Flor FIXTURES are UGLY in many types of applications.
I don't know what you mean.
>Flor light is not pleasing to many people- it is too white/blue or harsh.
Wrong. There are several colors of CFLs available. If want the yellow of incandescent, you can have it with CFLs.
>Flor fixtures often emit lots of RFI.
Lots is an overstatement. They do emit RFI, like anything with a switching power supply in them. In my room, I have a laptop, Mac Mini, LCD TV, audio amplifer (it's class D, so it's easily the biggest switching power supply I have), DirecTV receiver, Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 with switching power supplies in them. And I didn't even count the ones in my two mice or keyboards I have. Or for that matter, my phone and two bluetooth headsets here. So what's one more switcher going to do?
>Flor fixtures often emit noise.
No they don't. Modern fluorescent fixtures (T8 or any funny shape like Ds or CFLs) use power supplies that switch at over 10,000Hz instead of the old 60Hz and thus they don't make noise.
>Flor lamps are not instantly on.
If you get a good quality CFL, it comes on about as quickly as an incandescent. Less than 0.2s. You cannot remove your hand from the lightswitch before the light comes on no matter how fast you are. If you get an older or poor quality CFL, it might take seconds, which sucks. The one in my bedroom takes forever to turn on and I hate it, but I can't bring myself to replace it before it wears out. And it's been 5 years already.
>Flor lamps are also not instantly 100% bright, many taking MINUTES to reach full brightness.
This depends. They are not instantly 100% bright, true. Older and poor lamps take minutes to reach full brightness. Like the Panasonic in my computer room and my utility room. I call these my joke lamps (and I paid a fortune for them!). They're very dim anyway (so they'd fit in enclosed fixures) so even at full brightness they are dim. Again, these are many years old, so their replacements won't have this problem. Recent CFLs go to over 85% brightness within a half second and reach 100% in under 15 seconds.
Your list is mostly rubbish.
Do yourself a favor. Before you post any more nonsense, go to Home Depot and buy a single n:Vision (previously Commercial Electric) CFL. Buy the 2700K (orangey incandescent "white") color temperature. Then go try it out. See how fast it turns on. Listen to it not buzz. Check how the color matches incandescent. Go ahead, put it in an enclosed fixture (if you can find one it fits in) and ask your friends to switch it on and off and tell you if they notice anything funny (don't tell them it is a CFL ahead of time).
I've used dimmable fluorescent torchieres (indirect, like the halogens people are used to) for about 4 years now. I have personally connected a Kill-A-Watt to mine to measure the power usage.
In fact, I'll do it again right now.
At full bore, it uses 56W. This is when outputting the same light as a 300W halogen would (and note halogens are more efficient than regular incandescents).
Fully dimmed, it uses 16W. It is much dimmer in this case, I'd say about 1/4 brightness is a good estimate. As you mention, many people would like to dim it further, but you cannot.
Note that the VA usage is much higher because on this thing (as with many cheap fluorescents), the power factor correction is poor to non-existent. This runs about a 0.55 PF.
Now it's possible dimmable CFLs are different, but unlikely, as they use similar ballasts to this. And again, I should mention, I've had these lamps for about 4 years, so your idea that this is a new development in the last year is hogwash.
So, in short, your idea that dimming fluorescents doesn't save power is complete nonsense. I reduce my power usage to 1/6th (84%!) at both full and dimmed.
In CFLs, if you want yellower light, you can have it. Home Depot stocks 3 colors of CFL lights, incandescent (which I find too yellow except in rooms with a lot of wood), daylight (which is too blue for many uses) and an in between which I like a lot. I have a CFL in my porch lamp which no one has guessed is not an incandescent because it is the same color light, starts instantly, and is in an enclosed fixture so you can't see it is funny shaped. If you did examine the color spectra you'd see it does have a line spectra, so the color rendition isn't great in some cases. But that never comes up on my porch.
The government isn't dictating CFLs, it is dictating an efficiency level that incandescent cannot meet. If you want to use HID, go ahead. If you want to use LED, fine. If you want to use CFL, that's great. But wasting energy willy nilly isn't one of the options.
It would be really great if people like you would stop spreading lies like you do above. It's okay to believe bullshit if you want, but spreading it as truth is very hurtful to the overall level of public understanding.
CableCARD exists. TiVos use it. The failure of it to take over has nothing to do with the open market. It's because cable is not an open market. CableCARD was forced on the cable companies by the FCC and they didn't want it, so they responded by doing the worst possible job in supporting it.
Friends who have TiVos mention having to wait almost two weeks for a CableCARD "install" where a guy shows up with a card and just puts it in your TiVo. When they easily could have just given you the card on the spot.
H1B was fixed so that people can change jobs many years ago. I hired a person 3 years ago by transferring his H-1B. Your other measures have not been considered or adopted though.
Note that changing jobs during green card application (which many people are in while on H-1B) does cause somewhat of a reset in green card processing. So that's still a disincentive to change jobs.
Ah, there we go again. Just because hulu isn't available in your area, that means that the people putting their content on it (NBC Universal) don't "understand the internet".
The fact is that NBC is out to make money. They can put stuff on Hulu in the US and make money. But overseas, they already sold the rights to someone else (for money), and thus they don't have the option of offering the content on the internet in those countries.
So, if the content you want isn't available in your country on the internet (or any given site), bitch at the company that owns the rights in your country as not getting it.
I am in the US and I use my PVR to get my content. But that's because it's higher quality (relatively high rate HD quality). It isn't simpler. Hulu is simpler than setting your PVR. For example, if you have a DirecTV PVR, and you set a season pass for Survivor, it didn't record the finale last week because it wasn't listed as part of the season. Yeah, you can go back and fix the recording ahead of time (I did), but if you didn't, you missed it. But with Hulu, regardless of whether you figured this out ahead of time, the program is there to watch when you're ready to watch it.
Oh, so you say you can watch them at any time after they come out?
Wow, you can do so on Hulu too. Because unlike Bittorrent, it downloads it in order and you can watch it within a few seconds of the stream starting.
And all this without installing codec packs or putting utorrent in your startup folder! And the encodes are always good because the network makes them themselves.
You have a method you like. Great. There's no need to spread bullshit about other methods like Hulu.
They're both good methods. Hulu is slightly simpler and it's legal, but unfortunately, unlike using bittorrent, you never have the file to keep, so you have to stream it again later (and it may not be there later). Also, of course, on hulu, you have to watch ads too.
But if someone else wants to watch it in hulu, what's it to you? Why do you have to misrepresent other methods as being tougher than yours?
That's easy, but not easier.
For hulu you just go there, click about 3 times and you're watching in your browser.
With bittorrent, you have to install a couple programs, a couple codecs and then still once in a while it turns out the program you downloaded was a crappy encode and you have to go get another one.
I do agree the bittorrent route is pretty easy and it has the advantage that you have the file forever instead of having to stream it again, but it's not the easiest method, which is why hulu has taken off.
I rather expected to see this host of posts on here.
Same as when NBC pulls their shows from YouTube. The internets immediately surmised that NBC didn't know what they were doing, didn't understand the importance of internet viewing and only YouTube can deliver video over the internets.
The pundits (including slashdot pundits) did a great job of making a straw man, but were very wrong on what NBC understood and where they were headed. Hulu has been a huge success and most importantly to NBC Universal, it delivers them revenue.
It's very possible that people on slashdot are jumping to the wrong conclusions again.
Games don't "allow" you to resell them. The LAW allows you to sell them. Even if the EULA says you cannot, you can.
Why are you bragging Steam lets me play at my friends house? This is some kind of advantage? I can take my game DVD to anybody's house and play there with non-Steam games.
Steam limits you more than you are with a non-DRM game, or even one with a conventional copy protection that doesn't tie all your games to a single account.
That is against the Steam terms of service and if Valve catches you, they will shut off your account and you lose ALL the games you "bought".
I shouldn't have to risk losing all my games by loaning them out.
Furthermore, you cannot loan out one of your games this way, just all of them.
You cannot dim an LED array with a simple resistor. Well, not in a commercial application.
There are several problems with it, and the math gets pretty complex.
But basically, the only way reasonably to reduce LED brightness is through PWM (flickering). So most systems use PWM, but at a very high frequency (over 1KHz). To the eye, it is not noticeably flickering.
I do agree Cadillac's LED taillights are ridiculous. Honestly, they should be banned. They are too distracting.