This hits close to home, since I have a 7 year old 37" 1080i HDTV I am considering replacing. It works perfectly fine and I love it, but the biggest issue is that it only has 1 HDMI port. It seems every media device has an HDMI port now, whereas it wasn't as common when I purchased the TV. So that leaves me needing a switch, which confounds the other TV users in my house as they have to manually press a button next to the TV to switch from gaming to Roku to cable.
My TV also lacks a tuner, which is proving problematic when considering cord-cutting. I can buy an external tuner (with an HDMI out!), but so far I haven't found an ATSC HD tuner with an HDMI out for less than $100. At that point stretching to $350 for an another TV of the same size with more HDMI ports and an ATSC tuner doesn't seem like an outrageous proposition. The old TV becomes a monitor or a Roku station in the guest room.
That being said, my foresight on the need for HDMI ports was crap back in 2006. Am I alone on that?
I live in a historic neighborhood that is designated as such by the state and recognized on the National Register of Historic Places. Our neighborhood is a walking route with high housing density where all of the mailboxes are on porches or otherwise attached to the front of each house. Starting a year or two ago, the USPS started sending letters to newer residents explaining that their mail service would be discontinued if they did not move their mail box to the sidewalk. Of course, having a mailbox on the sidewalk is a violation of the historic code. A few folks actually complied until the neighborhood organization intervened and the local postmaster recognized that we are a historic neighborhood and will always be a walking route.
I'm foreseeing us having to fight yet another round of "move your mailbox" with the USPS, and if we don't win the results will be ugly. And I mean literally ugly. Without a massive redesign of our sidewalks and roads, there simply isn't a way to move mailboxes from the houses without making the sidewalks unusable and deteriorating the historic look and feel of our nationally recognized historic neighborhood.
I understand this won't be a big deal for most folks and I'm embracing a slippery slope fallacy, but if we're going to eliminate a historic fixture from 400+ houses, why are stopping someone from tearing a 120 year old Victorian to build a stucco McMansion?
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
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· Score: 1
True, true. Hyundai did something very similar to this not so long ago to boost shore up confidence in their reliability/resale value and it worked well. It is a shrewd move and I give them props for the plan.
After looking at their website and running the calculations, I concluded the deal is most definitely not for me. Ironically, my fairly short commute is what kills it. Oh well... there's always the pedestrian Leaf and a 5-Series for the weekends, I suppose.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
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· Score: 1
You neglected to mention that "revolutionary" plan pins the depreciation rate on one of the fastest depreciating cars in the world. That puts the depreciation at about 43% in 3 years. We don't have a lot of precedent to go off of on a purely electric luxury car, but given how well most hybrids hold their value I would assume the Model S would fare a lot better in the near term than the Mercedes-Benz S-Class.
Either Elon Musk is planning on some serious profit-taking in 3 years or he knows something about the quality of his cars we don't. Either way, it is a huge red flag in my mind.
Miller and Coors (as we think of it in the USA) merged in 2008, making them effectively one brewery in the USA. "Bud" isn't even a brewer, but a brand within AB-InBev, which is about as American as moules-frites. I suppose I'll give you half-credit for that one.
That correction made, I will concur with the remainder of your post.
Bribing a homeless person for a T-shirt, and probably the hot-spot equipment, with a 40 or two of King Cobra is hardly quitting the American Dream. If anything, it *is* the American Dream.
Not only could it exist, but it does and has since at least 2006 on all but the absolute cheapest GPS units. Both my low end Garmin and my cheap crappy Mio allowed me to pan and zoom on the map. They've also had several view options of routes, including fly-overs and speed-sensitive scaling, which displays the entire route as once and zooms in as you drive faster. Maps on GPS's are generally easy to use and certainly aren't "hidden."
I concur, but I'd also argue that certain gadgets also suppress ones danger instinct, which is highly relevant in the cases presented by the article. The stranded drivers all sensed they were making the wrong move leading up to their incidents, but they failed to act on it because they allowed the gadget pre-empted or overrode their instincts. These weren't necessarily unintelligent people, they simply trusted the technology more than their instincts which lead to a series of poor choices.
As much as I'd love to crack jokes about Darwinism in these cases, I can look back on my life and find several instances where my reliance on a product/gadget/technology got me into trouble. I imagine most people could find similar moments somewhere in their past. The difference is that those mistakes weren't as serious, didn't get publicized and they likely didn't occur in Death Valley.
You are comparing two very different scenarios in regards to data (re)use. Google News certainly compiles the data of others, but it very clearly provides attribution to the source link. For the most part, the same is true with Google Books - Google is obviously not the original source, but is acting as a catalogger or aggregator. Few users would confuse the original source of the data available at News and Books as Google. There is certainly debate over the legality and ethics of both of those sites, don't get me wrong, but attribution is everything when one is making claims of copying/plagiarism.
Microsoft allegedly copied results wholesale without any attribution to the source from which they took them. What they are supposedly doing is on par with a student copying and pasting a few lines from a text book into an essay and passing it off as their own work. It simply isn't the same as what Google is doing with News and Books.
FWIW, the two stated mileages in the summry are effectively the same, but they are stating it in two units of measure. The 313MPG figure is miles per imperial gallon, which is 261MPG by US units. That being said, I have no idea how to get that to 235MPG unless Qatar has invented their own mile or gallon.
This reminds me of when automakers moved to Torx screws from Phillips screws. It was a conspiracy, people had to buy tools, the automakers were just trying to keep you from working on your own car, etc. It turns out that Torx is superior to Phillips for bit/socket durability and assembly line efficiency. There was no conspiracy, it was just better for certain applications.
I suspect we will find out that the pentalobular socket has some advantage over a Phillips or even a Torx for smaller applications. Simply looking at the "penta", it seems to maximize surface contact between the bit/socket while maintaing the durability of the socket. The smaller Phillips and Torx screws are rather easy to damage and I suspect the pentalobular screw is measurably more durable for smaller applications. Just like Torx, I suspect the pentalobular will become the defacto standard for small screw head applications if it is proven to be superior to Torx and Phillips.
A bubble is likely, but tablets are also a complementary market to the PC. Tablets might have an impact on PC/laptop sales, but they aren't going to spell the death of the platform anymore than Netbooks did.
And like the mighty tablet, Netbooks were predicted to deliver the death blow for PC's by pretty much every tech blog/zine. They ended up having a slight negative impact on PC sales, and then were banished to the land of the unhip the moment usable, inexpensive tablets hit the market. Netbooks failed to deliver on the hype because they were complementary technology, not replacement technology. Tablets are much the same.
Yes, it is still in the seasonal flu shot, but the article being discussed is regarding MMR and autism. According to the link you so helpfully provide, MMR (and the vast majority of pediatric vaccinations) are completely free of thimerosal. This suggests that a child's exposure to thimerosal today is substantially less than what it was 20 years ago. In my opinon and based on my reading of the available research, this greatly diminishes the likelihood that thimerosal has anything to do with the development of autism.
I'm certain the anti-vaccination crowd shuns the flu shot, but as far as I know there is no over-hyped, falsified research touting a link between seasonal flu shots and autism. So sure, it's there... but not nearly as relevant.
Even if thimerosal were mercury, it has no relevant place in the anti-vaccine argument since there was no correlating decline in autism cases when it was removed from children's vaccines. Autism diagnoses have continued to rise in the wake of the questionable thimerosal ban and the rising numbers of the unvaccinated, which all but confirms that thimerosal was nothing more than a needless distraction.
Anti-vaxxers still bring out the ghost of thimerosal because having an opportunity to name drop "mercury" makes them appear to be more serious and educated than they actually are. The first step in reintroducing rationality and logic to an anti-vaxxer is to nip that particular argument in the bud.
I completely agree with you and I like the salt analogy, but I wouldn't even give them that much leeway.
Again, that still wouldn't be censorship, it would be business. Sears already does exactly what you are describing with the DVD's they carry in stores. They have corporate guidelines on which movies they will sell based on various criteria set at the corporate level, which are inevitably influenced by a moral component.
What you are saying is that Sears be required to sell hardcore porn if it's profitible, even if it collides with their business principles. That is f**king frightening.
So by your rather broad interpretation of that definition, pretty much every major retailer on the face of the planet is actively involved in "censorship." Sears, for example, never carried gay-rape fantasy novels in the first place, so they are by far the worst censorship offender!
Holy shit, I didn't realize how serious it was! We'd better call the ACLU and let them know about this liberty-crushing censorship that is allowing Sears and Amazon to somehow police our morals and examine our materials for objectionable matter, even for people who don't shop there!
On the other hand, we could act like rational adults and accept that private entities have the right to make their own decisions. In that case, one could simply procure the alleged questionable items elsewhere without any difficulty.
I'm just baffled that Slashdot users would still have such a difficult time distinguishing censorship from private business action. It cheapens the very seriousness of the term "censorship" to use it in such an improper, and frivolous way.
There is absolutely nothing worthy of the term "censorship" anywhere in this story. Amazon does not control what I can see/read/say any more than my local small engine repair shop does. It's a private entity with every right to choose what they sell. If one is unhappy with their selection or practices they can simply buy elsehwere. Shocking concept, isn't it?
It's nice to know I wasn't alone. Wert canned the real writers and brought in a bunch of talentless interns. From a business standpoint that's AOK, but they tried to use established Jalopnik references that they didn't fully understand and came off looking like clowns. "Look at me, I'm driving a Volvamino and doing double nickels on the dime!"
And you are dead-on - the decline in the quality of commentariat was directly proportional to the quality of the writing. In this case, the shift in both was nearly instantaneous. The last straw for me was a series of kiss-ass "volley*" reviews that trampled the spirit of the site I originally enjoyed.
* Volley review = A review where every negative comment is balanced with a positive comment, as not to entirely offend the manufacturer who may or may not be providing you the car. Prior to the Wert era, Jalopnik had a trashed such reviews in other publications.
You are correct, that is another problem with the library/TPB comparison. The vast majority of libraries these days charge for use of their copier(s) and even if they didn't you're probably not going to copy an entire work as the investment in time to photocopy "War and Peace" would be more than the cost of buying the book outright. And then, the pages you've copied are nowhere near the quality of the source material nor is the product perfectly identical.
I still don't see a difference that magically turns theft into something morally commendable. Sure, software vendors, movie studios and record labels can be jerky and use off-putting DRM to piss off their potential customers, but that is their right as the author and manufacturer. If one doesn't like it, they can support a competing product, produce their own product or simply abstain from the market.
Do I agree with it? Not always. Would I fight far reaching restrictions? Most definitely. Am I going to steal a bunch of software/media because I've invented some moral high ground that rationalizes it based on my disagreements with behavior of the industry? No.
Your comparison of TPB to a library overlooks the fact that the library (each individual library system, actually) purchases/liscenses/contracts the content they lend. TPB finds someone else who has purchased/liscensed/contracted content and takes it without having contributed anything to the authors/owners who created it. They do this at a scale that dwarfs the content cycle of a single library system.
The assets of a library also come with limitations (return dates, access limitations, DRM, content expiration dates) which would require a user to purchase the content if they want unfettered, indefinite access to the content. A pirated version of software and other pirated content has no such limitations and there is significantly less incentive for a pirate to convert to a legitimate copy.
You can certainly rationalize and encourage theft by playing the "poor people should have expensive stuff too" card, but most librarians would cringe at your argument. I'm all for helping people out and for free access to information, but if you want to own something (and I'm sorry, but unless you are getting firmware for a pacemaker, software is a want) you buy it. If you can't afford it you don't buy it or you find an alternative you can afford. Amazing how that works, ain't it?
They compared it to the compact Toyota Matrix, which isn't really the same class of vehicle. The Prius is a mid-size car and it feels, drives and is bigger than the Matrix. The Matrix is close to the footprint of the Prius and has a bit more utility thanks to the wagon instead of a hatch, but they aren't directly comparable. Particularlly in terms of standard and optional features - the Matrix isn't nearly as well equipped as the Prius.
Slashdot Mirror
This hits close to home, since I have a 7 year old 37" 1080i HDTV I am considering replacing. It works perfectly fine and I love it, but the biggest issue is that it only has 1 HDMI port. It seems every media device has an HDMI port now, whereas it wasn't as common when I purchased the TV. So that leaves me needing a switch, which confounds the other TV users in my house as they have to manually press a button next to the TV to switch from gaming to Roku to cable.
My TV also lacks a tuner, which is proving problematic when considering cord-cutting. I can buy an external tuner (with an HDMI out!), but so far I haven't found an ATSC HD tuner with an HDMI out for less than $100. At that point stretching to $350 for an another TV of the same size with more HDMI ports and an ATSC tuner doesn't seem like an outrageous proposition. The old TV becomes a monitor or a Roku station in the guest room.
That being said, my foresight on the need for HDMI ports was crap back in 2006. Am I alone on that?
I live in a historic neighborhood that is designated as such by the state and recognized on the National Register of Historic Places. Our neighborhood is a walking route with high housing density where all of the mailboxes are on porches or otherwise attached to the front of each house. Starting a year or two ago, the USPS started sending letters to newer residents explaining that their mail service would be discontinued if they did not move their mail box to the sidewalk. Of course, having a mailbox on the sidewalk is a violation of the historic code. A few folks actually complied until the neighborhood organization intervened and the local postmaster recognized that we are a historic neighborhood and will always be a walking route.
I'm foreseeing us having to fight yet another round of "move your mailbox" with the USPS, and if we don't win the results will be ugly. And I mean literally ugly. Without a massive redesign of our sidewalks and roads, there simply isn't a way to move mailboxes from the houses without making the sidewalks unusable and deteriorating the historic look and feel of our nationally recognized historic neighborhood.
I understand this won't be a big deal for most folks and I'm embracing a slippery slope fallacy, but if we're going to eliminate a historic fixture from 400+ houses, why are stopping someone from tearing a 120 year old Victorian to build a stucco McMansion?
True, true. Hyundai did something very similar to this not so long ago to boost shore up confidence in their reliability/resale value and it worked well. It is a shrewd move and I give them props for the plan.
After looking at their website and running the calculations, I concluded the deal is most definitely not for me. Ironically, my fairly short commute is what kills it. Oh well... there's always the pedestrian Leaf and a 5-Series for the weekends, I suppose.
You neglected to mention that "revolutionary" plan pins the depreciation rate on one of the fastest depreciating cars in the world. That puts the depreciation at about 43% in 3 years. We don't have a lot of precedent to go off of on a purely electric luxury car, but given how well most hybrids hold their value I would assume the Model S would fare a lot better in the near term than the Mercedes-Benz S-Class.
Either Elon Musk is planning on some serious profit-taking in 3 years or he knows something about the quality of his cars we don't. Either way, it is a huge red flag in my mind.
Big 3? More like "Big 1.5"
Miller and Coors (as we think of it in the USA) merged in 2008, making them effectively one brewery in the USA. "Bud" isn't even a brewer, but a brand within AB-InBev, which is about as American as moules-frites. I suppose I'll give you half-credit for that one.
That correction made, I will concur with the remainder of your post.
Bribing a homeless person for a T-shirt, and probably the hot-spot equipment, with a 40 or two of King Cobra is hardly quitting the American Dream. If anything, it *is* the American Dream.
If there's a free t-shirt involved, does it matter?
I don't get it, it's SXSW, not Bonnaroo.
Oh wait, I get it now!!
For some strange reason, I really want one of those T-shirts.
Not only could it exist, but it does and has since at least 2006 on all but the absolute cheapest GPS units. Both my low end Garmin and my cheap crappy Mio allowed me to pan and zoom on the map. They've also had several view options of routes, including fly-overs and speed-sensitive scaling, which displays the entire route as once and zooms in as you drive faster. Maps on GPS's are generally easy to use and certainly aren't "hidden."
I concur, but I'd also argue that certain gadgets also suppress ones danger instinct, which is highly relevant in the cases presented by the article. The stranded drivers all sensed they were making the wrong move leading up to their incidents, but they failed to act on it because they allowed the gadget pre-empted or overrode their instincts. These weren't necessarily unintelligent people, they simply trusted the technology more than their instincts which lead to a series of poor choices.
As much as I'd love to crack jokes about Darwinism in these cases, I can look back on my life and find several instances where my reliance on a product/gadget/technology got me into trouble. I imagine most people could find similar moments somewhere in their past. The difference is that those mistakes weren't as serious, didn't get publicized and they likely didn't occur in Death Valley.
You are comparing two very different scenarios in regards to data (re)use. Google News certainly compiles the data of others, but it very clearly provides attribution to the source link. For the most part, the same is true with Google Books - Google is obviously not the original source, but is acting as a catalogger or aggregator. Few users would confuse the original source of the data available at News and Books as Google. There is certainly debate over the legality and ethics of both of those sites, don't get me wrong, but attribution is everything when one is making claims of copying/plagiarism.
Microsoft allegedly copied results wholesale without any attribution to the source from which they took them. What they are supposedly doing is on par with a student copying and pasting a few lines from a text book into an essay and passing it off as their own work. It simply isn't the same as what Google is doing with News and Books.
FWIW, the two stated mileages in the summry are effectively the same, but they are stating it in two units of measure. The 313MPG figure is miles per imperial gallon, which is 261MPG by US units. That being said, I have no idea how to get that to 235MPG unless Qatar has invented their own mile or gallon.
This reminds me of when automakers moved to Torx screws from Phillips screws. It was a conspiracy, people had to buy tools, the automakers were just trying to keep you from working on your own car, etc. It turns out that Torx is superior to Phillips for bit/socket durability and assembly line efficiency. There was no conspiracy, it was just better for certain applications.
I suspect we will find out that the pentalobular socket has some advantage over a Phillips or even a Torx for smaller applications. Simply looking at the "penta", it seems to maximize surface contact between the bit/socket while maintaing the durability of the socket. The smaller Phillips and Torx screws are rather easy to damage and I suspect the pentalobular screw is measurably more durable for smaller applications. Just like Torx, I suspect the pentalobular will become the defacto standard for small screw head applications if it is proven to be superior to Torx and Phillips.
"Netbooks failed to deliver on the hype" to deliver to the death blow to the PC != "Netbook failure"
But thanks for playing the "quote out of context" game.
A bubble is likely, but tablets are also a complementary market to the PC. Tablets might have an impact on PC/laptop sales, but they aren't going to spell the death of the platform anymore than Netbooks did.
And like the mighty tablet, Netbooks were predicted to deliver the death blow for PC's by pretty much every tech blog/zine. They ended up having a slight negative impact on PC sales, and then were banished to the land of the unhip the moment usable, inexpensive tablets hit the market. Netbooks failed to deliver on the hype because they were complementary technology, not replacement technology. Tablets are much the same.
Yes, it is still in the seasonal flu shot, but the article being discussed is regarding MMR and autism. According to the link you so helpfully provide, MMR (and the vast majority of pediatric vaccinations) are completely free of thimerosal. This suggests that a child's exposure to thimerosal today is substantially less than what it was 20 years ago. In my opinon and based on my reading of the available research, this greatly diminishes the likelihood that thimerosal has anything to do with the development of autism.
I'm certain the anti-vaccination crowd shuns the flu shot, but as far as I know there is no over-hyped, falsified research touting a link between seasonal flu shots and autism. So sure, it's there... but not nearly as relevant.
Even if thimerosal were mercury, it has no relevant place in the anti-vaccine argument since there was no correlating decline in autism cases when it was removed from children's vaccines. Autism diagnoses have continued to rise in the wake of the questionable thimerosal ban and the rising numbers of the unvaccinated, which all but confirms that thimerosal was nothing more than a needless distraction.
Anti-vaxxers still bring out the ghost of thimerosal because having an opportunity to name drop "mercury" makes them appear to be more serious and educated than they actually are. The first step in reintroducing rationality and logic to an anti-vaxxer is to nip that particular argument in the bud.
I completely agree with you and I like the salt analogy, but I wouldn't even give them that much leeway.
Again, that still wouldn't be censorship, it would be business. Sears already does exactly what you are describing with the DVD's they carry in stores. They have corporate guidelines on which movies they will sell based on various criteria set at the corporate level, which are inevitably influenced by a moral component.
What you are saying is that Sears be required to sell hardcore porn if it's profitible, even if it collides with their business principles. That is f**king frightening.
So by your rather broad interpretation of that definition, pretty much every major retailer on the face of the planet is actively involved in "censorship." Sears, for example, never carried gay-rape fantasy novels in the first place, so they are by far the worst censorship offender!
Holy shit, I didn't realize how serious it was! We'd better call the ACLU and let them know about this liberty-crushing censorship that is allowing Sears and Amazon to somehow police our morals and examine our materials for objectionable matter, even for people who don't shop there!
On the other hand, we could act like rational adults and accept that private entities have the right to make their own decisions. In that case, one could simply procure the alleged questionable items elsewhere without any difficulty.
I'm just baffled that Slashdot users would still have such a difficult time distinguishing censorship from private business action. It cheapens the very seriousness of the term "censorship" to use it in such an improper, and frivolous way.
There is absolutely nothing worthy of the term "censorship" anywhere in this story. Amazon does not control what I can see/read/say any more than my local small engine repair shop does. It's a private entity with every right to choose what they sell. If one is unhappy with their selection or practices they can simply buy elsehwere. Shocking concept, isn't it?
It's nice to know I wasn't alone. Wert canned the real writers and brought in a bunch of talentless interns. From a business standpoint that's AOK, but they tried to use established Jalopnik references that they didn't fully understand and came off looking like clowns. "Look at me, I'm driving a Volvamino and doing double nickels on the dime!"
And you are dead-on - the decline in the quality of commentariat was directly proportional to the quality of the writing. In this case, the shift in both was nearly instantaneous. The last straw for me was a series of kiss-ass "volley*" reviews that trampled the spirit of the site I originally enjoyed.
* Volley review = A review where every negative comment is balanced with a positive comment, as not to entirely offend the manufacturer who may or may not be providing you the car. Prior to the Wert era, Jalopnik had a trashed such reviews in other publications.
You are correct, that is another problem with the library/TPB comparison. The vast majority of libraries these days charge for use of their copier(s) and even if they didn't you're probably not going to copy an entire work as the investment in time to photocopy "War and Peace" would be more than the cost of buying the book outright. And then, the pages you've copied are nowhere near the quality of the source material nor is the product perfectly identical.
I still don't see a difference that magically turns theft into something morally commendable. Sure, software vendors, movie studios and record labels can be jerky and use off-putting DRM to piss off their potential customers, but that is their right as the author and manufacturer. If one doesn't like it, they can support a competing product, produce their own product or simply abstain from the market.
Do I agree with it? Not always. Would I fight far reaching restrictions? Most definitely. Am I going to steal a bunch of software/media because I've invented some moral high ground that rationalizes it based on my disagreements with behavior of the industry? No.
Your comparison of TPB to a library overlooks the fact that the library (each individual library system, actually) purchases/liscenses/contracts the content they lend. TPB finds someone else who has purchased/liscensed/contracted content and takes it without having contributed anything to the authors/owners who created it. They do this at a scale that dwarfs the content cycle of a single library system.
The assets of a library also come with limitations (return dates, access limitations, DRM, content expiration dates) which would require a user to purchase the content if they want unfettered, indefinite access to the content. A pirated version of software and other pirated content has no such limitations and there is significantly less incentive for a pirate to convert to a legitimate copy.
You can certainly rationalize and encourage theft by playing the "poor people should have expensive stuff too" card, but most librarians would cringe at your argument. I'm all for helping people out and for free access to information, but if you want to own something (and I'm sorry, but unless you are getting firmware for a pacemaker, software is a want) you buy it. If you can't afford it you don't buy it or you find an alternative you can afford. Amazing how that works, ain't it?
They compared it to the compact Toyota Matrix, which isn't really the same class of vehicle. The Prius is a mid-size car and it feels, drives and is bigger than the Matrix. The Matrix is close to the footprint of the Prius and has a bit more utility thanks to the wagon instead of a hatch, but they aren't directly comparable. Particularlly in terms of standard and optional features - the Matrix isn't nearly as well equipped as the Prius.