2 - Find a job that requires minimum effort and time and allows you to spend most of your time doing things that make you happy. (the writer who's also a security guard option)
3 - Find a job that sucks but allows you to make a lot of money, then retire early and spend the rest of your life doing things that make you happy. (the investment banker turned surfer option.)
Or, do both and get your real estate license. Words you will never hear together are "real estate agent" and "busting your ass for a paycheck." The only potential downside is getting fired for not selling enough, but you have to be really terrible for that to happen.
Perhaps it is from EMP from all the wires/power/machines that run up the wall *to* the tower, not the tower itself.
Coaxial cable contains an unbalanced center conductor surrounded by a shield. There should not be any signal radiating from the coax itself, UNLESS it was installed improperly. However the likelyhood of that is very low, unless the cell phone network provider was very sloppy in system monitoring and failed to notice a drop off in signal strength from that tower. While not impossible, the more likely effect would be RF burns when leaning up against the wall where the cables are, not brain tumors effecting entire floors of buildings.
Just how much transmit power does a cell tower have anyway? I would think it would be well below 5 watts on a given frequency/channel, given the way they are designed to only cover about a 5 mile radius. Of course, the effective power used for the entire band would be much higher...
it's the new Motorola THINKR (tm) implant. It resides in the brain, and is self-assembling. It has TV, DVD, GPS, Java, 12-megapixel camera that uses your eyeballs, and Itunes, of course.
Yea, but Verizon Wireless will diable most of the cool stuff.
The funny part? The tower hasn't even been operational
When my dad put up an HF vertical years ago, the lady next door said her TV reception got much worse after he put it up. She told him this as he was running the coax into the house.
Later this year, Comcast will be rolling out TiVO's Open Cable software. It will use the existing DVRs. It will use the Open Cable specifications. Hopefully it won't have too many bugs. I doubt it will have any home networking stuff, but you never know. At the National Cable Television Association conference this year, Motorola showed off the ability to schedule recordings from your cell phone, and hinted at being able to watch content from the DVR as well. I'm sure COX (being somewhat more technologically advanced than Comcast) will also be offering UI choice.
"The OpenCable(TM) initiative, managed by the Advanced Platforms and Services group at CableLabs, began in 1997 with the goal of helping the cable industry deploy interactive services over cable. Like several other CableLabs projects, including DOCSIS® and PacketCable(TM), OpenCable(TM) provides a set of industry standards. These OpenCable standards help achieve the goal of interactive services by meeting three key objectives:
1. Define the next-generation digital consumer device.
2. Encourage supplier competition.
3. Create a retail hardware and software platform.
As such, the OpenCable project has two key components: a hardware specification and a software specification. The hardware specifications describe both one-way and two-way digital cable-ready "host" devices that are interoperable with cable systems throughout the U.S., thus creating a retail solution for consumer electronics products for cable. The software specification of the OpenCable project, called the OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP(TM)), solves the problem of proprietary operating system software, thereby creating a common platform for interactive television applications and services. Interactive (bi-directional) OpenCable products require an OCAP middleware stack, but the OpenCable Unidirectional Receiver (OCUR) does not."
Of course, I don't think just anyone will be able to load up an application for the settop box, but it is a lot better than the bad old days we're living through now. From what I've read, there will be oppertunities to write small applets for settops. However, the cable companies might just do what Verizon Wireless does and lock out anyone who doesn't pay them for get it now access.
Oh, and they are requring everyone in the US to buy a new TV or STB (At least we get better pictures). All because the FCC wanted to allow secondary use on the unused channels for first responder dispatch radios.
Granted, most of the problem could have been avoided with some reasonable thinking from all parties involved, but hey, we're Americans! We want an unresonable response to a reasonable situation!
Clearly Bush is not silencing anybody since the guy can go on 60 Minutes and accuse him of doing exactly that. That is the very definition of the freedom of speech, the freedom of the press.
His point was not that he couldn't speak freely. His point was that he was told to do a study of global warming. Before publishing his findings, a former oil company lobbist twisted his writing to suit the white house agenda. I'm sure this is not the first administration to do this. The problem is not that he was stiffled from reporting his findings to the world. It is just that his report can/will be used to create policy. Thanks to the Internet, anyone can say just about any trash they want (witness the story about tinfoil hats), but how many policymakers are going to believe something from the Internet over a study funded by NASA?
What restrictions? Dude! You're on 60 Minutes as you say this complaining that the White House won't let you say exactly what you're saying. How in the fuck are you being restricted?
He said that people who didn't play ball with the white house were considered outcasts and had trouble getting promoted. In a bureaucracy, this is the kiss of death. There are plenty of people who are smart and eagar who get labeled "not a team player" and never move up because of this. Like it or not, that's what happens. I could see that much worse in a hyper-political environment, where a powerful person in an administration could just make a simple phone call to this guys boss "expressing concerns" about the report is enough to label him as someone who rocks the boat. I hope he has a consulting job lined up, because he's never going anywhere with NASA.
I'm not an overly-critical person, but I think the article is FULL of juicy, one-sentence generalizations like the above.
You must not be a USA Today subscriber. This "newspaper" was specifically designed to dumb it down. It should thought of as news for kids who want to prentend they are reading a paper just like dad.
This shows what is possible today with coax. Production studios are shipping uncompressed digital HD over coax all the time (smpte 292m runs at 1.4Gbps), although they are often having to replace connectors and take more care in bending radius. 270Mbps shouldn't be a big deal if the cable is properly terminated and not kinked.
except that I suspect that most houses are wired with cheap-ass RG-59, which is extremely susceptible to interference.
Well, it should work. 270Mbps is not that much on coax. Television production studios have been runing smpte 259M (component 4:2:2 standard def. video @270Mbps), over '59 coax for years. Granted, it is much better stuff than in your average house, but it is often over much longer distances.
I would guess that the 270Mbps is the raw wire speed and will have a lot of error correction. That and active equalization should keep things in good shape, as long as there aren't any major cable problems, like crappy connectors or kinks that might change the impedence of the coax.
A real article, not the standard ZDnet fluff/press release stuff would be helpful.
I always thought the cable company owned those lines, and also one of the many reasons why one location is usually never serviced by 2 cable companies. The cable company owns the cable 1 foot away from the house entrance point. After that, it belongs to the homeowner/landlord. This was decided when the DBS guys started business and some cable companies wanted to block them from using the inside wiring.
If Cisco plans to "invade" homes, they'll have to drop their IOS crap. Or at least develop a graphical management system.
Well, if you look at the top left corner on this site, you'll see that Linksys is a division of Cisco Systems. The very same Cisco that is the subject of the article.
I really don't think they are planning on selling the standard home user a 7200VXR chassis!
Most of the comments I've been reading sound a lot like the big iron computer makers when they saw an Apple ][ back in the day. The point of this product is not to compete with the high end, but the middle. There are plenty of cases where a $5000 router and a big service contract just don't make sense. Sure, I drool over our Cisco switch, but for most IT departments, Cisco is more expensive than necessary. The market really does need a middle player. I hope this is it.
1) the ability to easily set up a DMZ. I can firewall off my internal network easy enough, but if we want Joe User to do it, it needs to be easy and obvious to set up a free area that is distinct from the walled off internal network.
Well, give 'em some time. It is easy enough with an industrial grade (IE: Cisco) router. The Linksys stuff will get there eventually. Actually, there is a DMZ option on my Linksys. It should be easy enough to set up a second router on its own subnet and plug the AP into it. But I know what you mean, Joe Sixpack would never be able to figure that one out.
2) Bandwidth throttling based on the above mentioned DMZ. If you are in the DMZ, you may use x% of the available bandwidth. If you are on the internal network, regular rules apply.
4) Mesh network capabilities. Each unit should seek out other units in range and create an ad hoc mesh network. This would be the first step toward taking the Internet back from the corporations currently in control.
Does anyone know of a real world mesh network? Not a test, not some grad student's thesis, but a real, I can buy/download software today mesh net?
5) Real range. I mean like at least 50 yards, but I'd prefer a lot more. When it comes to range, there is no "too much" only "not enough".
There are 2 ways to increase range: Increase power levels (not permitted due to FCC rules), or decrease noise (get rid of all those microwave ovens, cordless phones, other APs, and the sun). WiMAX may change this, since it will be possible to license bandwidth, but I doubt that non-incorporated Americans will be able to get one.
it is hard to see how consumption cn be reduced in a competitive global environment.
Well, in the 1970's, the US did manage to reduce the amount of energy used per person, in a very real way. The problem is that over time, these efficencies led to consumption increases because the prices (real dollars) stayed somewhat stable (due to abundance caused by the increase in efficency), while inflation/increased productivity increased the income of the average American. This led to the massive increase in the size of a house (the McMansion phoneomena, with all the bedrooms, Sub Zero fridges and massive heating systems), cars (SUVs and giant pickups), and most electronic devices going to a standby mode instead of a real shutdown. People say they want to use less energy, but they really, really want more stuff.
There are constant upgrades to electrical power plants, otherwise we wouldn't be able to waste as much as we do and still have basically the same number of base load plants in the country. However, the electrical generation field is a very mature industry. The chance for innovation is very limited within the current structure. At some point the power generators will need to get new plants online, and they'll have to bite the bullet and do it with the existing envriornmental restrictions, because there's just no way, even with the current 1 party rule (in the US), they'll be able to get rid of the restrictions (unless we're at war... Oh, wait... I forgot), or build useful generation plants in less than 1 congressional term.
Most people who have a choice will buy the cheapest option when it comes to electronics (I-POD being an exception, but it is a fashion accessory). This is because of the WallMart effect and commodity hardware/generic software.
Because of this, MS is going to try to split out their market, much like GM did in the post WW2 era: Get poor and young people to buy cheap, no frills. As they advance up the economic ladder, upsell them to the higher end product. The core product is still the same (same engine, transimssion, even in many cases, the same body), but add on more/"better" options like leather seats, climate control, 8-track tape players, marketing, etc.
The only problem with that model is when real competition shows up, you have to start adding the better options on to the low end cars to keep up with the competitor. At some point there is a knee to the curve and there is no difference at all between Cadilac and Chevy, except for the name plate, marketing and cost. This completely kills your most profitable market (high end) because the customer doesn't want to drive a Cadilac that looks exactly like a Chevy Cavalier, and they've long since moved on to something else.
At some point the marketing department takes over the company and decides that they need a product that they can sell, not one that makes sense. Sadly, we are at that point now with the SUV (made worse by stupid laws that require fuel economy calculations to be an average of the fleet of cars and trucks instead of on a per-unit bassis). After all, when was the last time you saw an SUV ad that didn't feature at least one shot of the truck on some back road out in Montana with the perfect family at the campsite? Or a pickup ad with some cowboy roping steers out in West Texas (with his good friend the oil wildcatter, getting dirty out in the back 40)? Who wouldn't want that lifestyle? I sure would, and, apperently, so do most women aged 25-50 who can't park.
I think this is why apple will be the next big deal, and some low end OS, written mostly in India or China will be the end of MS. Microsoft will be forced to compete on features with some low end OS that just beats them at there own game (HINT: It won't be Linux as we know it, but it may be something that is based on it, much like the Subaru boxer engine was a knock off of the VW*). This will piss off the high end, who will move to Apple, kill MS R&D's budget and MS will be the first major company to crash and burn in the infromation age. Remember: What's good for GM is good for America? That was said at a time when 60% of the cars on the road were GM built, and the biggest threat to them (as precieved at the time) was the Sherman Anti-trust Act. BTW- Microsoft will, after releasing Visa, will announce their biggest quarter ever. Buy your stock just before the release, and sell it 3-4 months after their biggest quarter ever. Don't look back, because they won't be around much longer after that.
*Linux is the VW microbus of the software world: cheap, reliable software you can fix yourself. Just that you may end up going uphill in reverse since the reverse gear has much higher touque than first, but you know that already since you fixed the tranny yourself. Just know that thost people pointing and laughing wouln't know how great a vehicle you have, and yes, you are superior to them.
Lucid dreaming can be taught. There is a very good book The Lucid Dreamer that tells you how to do it. There are plenty of devices that detect REM sleep and start flashing LEDs, making noises, etc, that will let you know that you are dreaming. NONE of them I've seen detect brain waves, nor do any of the valid ones make that claim. The problem with lucid dreaming is that it seems to attract the same hippy "earth sprirt" crowd as the folks who think Sadonia AZ is a spiritual place just becuase of the pretty rocks and high altitude.
I haven't attempted to do it for a few years, but it does work, and if you get good at it, you can force your mind to do many intresting things. Some people claim to solve problems by trying them out in a dream first, but I really doubt it would help much, since your brain is controls the outcome and it becomes easy to gloss over things like the laws of physics and things you don't understand.
I gave up on TiVO after they wouldn't let me transfer my lifetime subscription to a new unit (only a referb at my cost) after their software upgrade turned it into a paperweight.
However, there's a standards group called Open Cable that will roll out later this year. It will allow development of new applications across all cable box platforms, and make it easier for retail set top boxes. This is how TiVO will get back in business, in my opinion. There is no way they'll be able to beat Motorola and Scientific Atlanta/Cisco on volume, cable system integration, or hardware support. Cable companies are good at just swapping out a bad box and giving you a new one (one of the few things they seem to do well. Troubleshooting is a whole other problem). How can they compete with that?
I can't wait for the one telco that gets it right, and provides an environment where creativity can reign free; someone will develop a kick-ass application for that carrier's phones, everyone will flock to them, and the other carriers will finally get a clue.
Have fun waiting. Here is a helpful link. The telcos in the US actually think they are hip deep in competition, even though all they pay attention to is talk time and price. Since telecom tends to be a closed system when it comes to employment (and education), and the first thing a new feature has to do is make it through the call center scripts easily, you won't see anything new come out until it has been completly sanitized and made (mostly) useless. That, and the cell phone companies are very worried about you stealing service and listening in on other calls.
What needs to happen is a disruptive technology, like WiMAX, but the buildout of the infrastructure will be high for "carrier class" service levels, and Qualcomm, Motorola and the gang are so intrenched in the handset market, that I doubt we'll see any big changes for at least the next 10 years.
The way to see this stuff is with one of those old 3 meter dishes from the 80's. The problem is that it is likely your community has laws against such things being allowed in your yard (although most of the time you can put up a fence or something to hide it). I always said I would never live in a placee that has such restrictions (I want to put up a tower someday), but it is getting harder and harder to find a place that has no such restrictions that is affordable. The 100 acre ranch would be ideal, but not gonna happen on my salary.
They say there was a time when people wanted to see telephone and power wires because it meant progress. Now we have to hide infrastructure underground, lest we offend the eye...
Sort of like the experiment conducted by Cramerica Corporation in the mid 90's to test the viability of a beach ball oil containment system by tossing a ball of motoroil out the 5th story window of a Mahattan highrise. The test was unsuccessful (I believe the head researcher was quoted as saying "Well, that didn't work."), and there were minor injuries, but at least we all know for sure that a beach ball is not a good backup containment system for oil tankers.
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2 - Find a job that requires minimum effort and time and allows you to spend most of your time doing things that make you happy. (the writer who's also a security guard option)
3 - Find a job that sucks but allows you to make a lot of money, then retire early and spend the rest of your life doing things that make you happy. (the investment banker turned surfer option.)
Or, do both and get your real estate license. Words you will never hear together are "real estate agent" and "busting your ass for a paycheck." The only potential downside is getting fired for not selling enough, but you have to be really terrible for that to happen.
a 20' alumimum pipe with a top hat effects tv reception? That's even crazier!
Coaxial cable contains an unbalanced center conductor surrounded by a shield. There should not be any signal radiating from the coax itself, UNLESS it was installed improperly. However the likelyhood of that is very low, unless the cell phone network provider was very sloppy in system monitoring and failed to notice a drop off in signal strength from that tower. While not impossible, the more likely effect would be RF burns when leaning up against the wall where the cables are, not brain tumors effecting entire floors of buildings.
Just how much transmit power does a cell tower have anyway? I would think it would be well below 5 watts on a given frequency/channel, given the way they are designed to only cover about a 5 mile radius. Of course, the effective power used for the entire band would be much higher...
Yea, but Verizon Wireless will diable most of the cool stuff.
When my dad put up an HF vertical years ago, the lady next door said her TV reception got much worse after he put it up. She told him this as he was running the coax into the house.
Later this year, Comcast will be rolling out TiVO's Open Cable software. It will use the existing DVRs. It will use the Open Cable specifications. Hopefully it won't have too many bugs. I doubt it will have any home networking stuff, but you never know. At the National Cable Television Association conference this year, Motorola showed off the ability to schedule recordings from your cell phone, and hinted at being able to watch content from the DVR as well. I'm sure COX (being somewhat more technologically advanced than Comcast) will also be offering UI choice.
From http://www.opencable.com/
"The OpenCable(TM) initiative, managed by the Advanced Platforms and Services group at CableLabs, began in 1997 with the goal of helping the cable industry deploy interactive services over cable. Like several other CableLabs projects, including DOCSIS® and PacketCable(TM), OpenCable(TM) provides a set of industry standards. These OpenCable standards help achieve the goal of interactive services by meeting three key objectives:
1. Define the next-generation digital consumer device.
2. Encourage supplier competition.
3. Create a retail hardware and software platform.
As such, the OpenCable project has two key components: a hardware specification and a software specification. The hardware specifications describe both one-way and two-way digital cable-ready "host" devices that are interoperable with cable systems throughout the U.S., thus creating a retail solution for consumer electronics products for cable. The software specification of the OpenCable project, called the OpenCable Application Platform (OCAP(TM)), solves the problem of proprietary operating system software, thereby creating a common platform for interactive television applications and services. Interactive (bi-directional) OpenCable products require an OCAP middleware stack, but the OpenCable Unidirectional Receiver (OCUR) does not."
Of course, I don't think just anyone will be able to load up an application for the settop box, but it is a lot better than the bad old days we're living through now. From what I've read, there will be oppertunities to write small applets for settops. However, the cable companies might just do what Verizon Wireless does and lock out anyone who doesn't pay them for get it now access.
And, even more interesting, Bill Gates is essentially slapping Bush across the face. "Hey, Mr President, looks who's the man in the house."
Maybe because it is a very long flight?
I woz truly blown away by this statement.
Most real entrepreneurs want to make a product or perfom a service first, make money second. Money is what makes it all possible.
Well, here in the USA, the government is taking away spectrum from a well established industry:
http://www.atsc.org/faq/faq_general.html
Oh, and they are requring everyone in the US to buy a new TV or STB (At least we get better pictures). All because the FCC wanted to allow secondary use on the unused channels for first responder dispatch radios.
Granted, most of the problem could have been avoided with some reasonable thinking from all parties involved, but hey, we're Americans! We want an unresonable response to a reasonable situation!
His point was not that he couldn't speak freely. His point was that he was told to do a study of global warming. Before publishing his findings, a former oil company lobbist twisted his writing to suit the white house agenda. I'm sure this is not the first administration to do this. The problem is not that he was stiffled from reporting his findings to the world. It is just that his report can/will be used to create policy. Thanks to the Internet, anyone can say just about any trash they want (witness the story about tinfoil hats), but how many policymakers are going to believe something from the Internet over a study funded by NASA?
What restrictions? Dude! You're on 60 Minutes as you say this complaining that the White House won't let you say exactly what you're saying. How in the fuck are you being restricted?
He said that people who didn't play ball with the white house were considered outcasts and had trouble getting promoted. In a bureaucracy, this is the kiss of death. There are plenty of people who are smart and eagar who get labeled "not a team player" and never move up because of this. Like it or not, that's what happens. I could see that much worse in a hyper-political environment, where a powerful person in an administration could just make a simple phone call to this guys boss "expressing concerns" about the report is enough to label him as someone who rocks the boat. I hope he has a consulting job lined up, because he's never going anywhere with NASA.
You must not be a USA Today subscriber. This "newspaper" was specifically designed to dumb it down. It should thought of as news for kids who want to prentend they are reading a paper just like dad.
http://www.fiber-optics.info/articles/dtv-hdtv.htm
This shows what is possible today with coax. Production studios are shipping uncompressed digital HD over coax all the time (smpte 292m runs at 1.4Gbps), although they are often having to replace connectors and take more care in bending radius. 270Mbps shouldn't be a big deal if the cable is properly terminated and not kinked.
Well, it should work. 270Mbps is not that much on coax. Television production studios have been runing smpte 259M (component 4:2:2 standard def. video @270Mbps), over '59 coax for years. Granted, it is much better stuff than in your average house, but it is often over much longer distances.
I would guess that the 270Mbps is the raw wire speed and will have a lot of error correction. That and active equalization should keep things in good shape, as long as there aren't any major cable problems, like crappy connectors or kinks that might change the impedence of the coax.
A real article, not the standard ZDnet fluff/press release stuff would be helpful.
I always thought the cable company owned those lines, and also one of the many reasons why one location is usually never serviced by 2 cable companies.
The cable company owns the cable 1 foot away from the house entrance point. After that, it belongs to the homeowner/landlord. This was decided when the DBS guys started business and some cable companies wanted to block them from using the inside wiring.
Well, if you look at the top left corner on this site, you'll see that Linksys is a division of Cisco Systems. The very same Cisco that is the subject of the article.
I really don't think they are planning on selling the standard home user a 7200VXR chassis!
Why would anyone want to start a site for trekers? They only get traffic every 7 years!
Most of the comments I've been reading sound a lot like the big iron computer makers when they saw an Apple ][ back in the day. The point of this product is not to compete with the high end, but the middle. There are plenty of cases where a $5000 router and a big service contract just don't make sense. Sure, I drool over our Cisco switch, but for most IT departments, Cisco is more expensive than necessary. The market really does need a middle player. I hope this is it.
1) the ability to easily set up a DMZ. I can firewall off my internal network easy enough, but if we want Joe User to do it, it needs to be easy and obvious to set up a free area that is distinct from the walled off internal network.
Well, give 'em some time. It is easy enough with an industrial grade (IE: Cisco) router. The Linksys stuff will get there eventually. Actually, there is a DMZ option on my Linksys. It should be easy enough to set up a second router on its own subnet and plug the AP into it. But I know what you mean, Joe Sixpack would never be able to figure that one out.
2) Bandwidth throttling based on the above mentioned DMZ. If you are in the DMZ, you may use x% of the available bandwidth. If you are on the internal network, regular rules apply.
See above.
3) Hot chicks in every box.
Already there: http://www.page3.com/
4) Mesh network capabilities. Each unit should seek out other units in range and create an ad hoc mesh network. This would be the first step toward taking the Internet back from the corporations currently in control.
Does anyone know of a real world mesh network? Not a test, not some grad student's thesis, but a real, I can buy/download software today mesh net?
5) Real range. I mean like at least 50 yards, but I'd prefer a lot more. When it comes to range, there is no "too much" only "not enough".
There are 2 ways to increase range: Increase power levels (not permitted due to FCC rules), or decrease noise (get rid of all those microwave ovens, cordless phones, other APs, and the sun). WiMAX may change this, since it will be possible to license bandwidth, but I doubt that non-incorporated Americans will be able to get one.
Well, in the 1970's, the US did manage to reduce the amount of energy used per person, in a very real way. The problem is that over time, these efficencies led to consumption increases because the prices (real dollars) stayed somewhat stable (due to abundance caused by the increase in efficency), while inflation/increased productivity increased the income of the average American. This led to the massive increase in the size of a house (the McMansion phoneomena, with all the bedrooms, Sub Zero fridges and massive heating systems), cars (SUVs and giant pickups), and most electronic devices going to a standby mode instead of a real shutdown. People say they want to use less energy, but they really, really want more stuff.
There are constant upgrades to electrical power plants, otherwise we wouldn't be able to waste as much as we do and still have basically the same number of base load plants in the country. However, the electrical generation field is a very mature industry. The chance for innovation is very limited within the current structure. At some point the power generators will need to get new plants online, and they'll have to bite the bullet and do it with the existing envriornmental restrictions, because there's just no way, even with the current 1 party rule (in the US), they'll be able to get rid of the restrictions (unless we're at war... Oh, wait... I forgot), or build useful generation plants in less than 1 congressional term.
Most people who have a choice will buy the cheapest option when it comes to electronics (I-POD being an exception, but it is a fashion accessory). This is because of the WallMart effect and commodity hardware/generic software.
Because of this, MS is going to try to split out their market, much like GM did in the post WW2 era: Get poor and young people to buy cheap, no frills. As they advance up the economic ladder, upsell them to the higher end product. The core product is still the same (same engine, transimssion, even in many cases, the same body), but add on more/"better" options like leather seats, climate control, 8-track tape players, marketing, etc.
The only problem with that model is when real competition shows up, you have to start adding the better options on to the low end cars to keep up with the competitor. At some point there is a knee to the curve and there is no difference at all between Cadilac and Chevy, except for the name plate, marketing and cost. This completely kills your most profitable market (high end) because the customer doesn't want to drive a Cadilac that looks exactly like a Chevy Cavalier, and they've long since moved on to something else.
At some point the marketing department takes over the company and decides that they need a product that they can sell, not one that makes sense. Sadly, we are at that point now with the SUV (made worse by stupid laws that require fuel economy calculations to be an average of the fleet of cars and trucks instead of on a per-unit bassis). After all, when was the last time you saw an SUV ad that didn't feature at least one shot of the truck on some back road out in Montana with the perfect family at the campsite? Or a pickup ad with some cowboy roping steers out in West Texas (with his good friend the oil wildcatter, getting dirty out in the back 40)? Who wouldn't want that lifestyle? I sure would, and, apperently, so do most women aged 25-50 who can't park.
I think this is why apple will be the next big deal, and some low end OS, written mostly in India or China will be the end of MS. Microsoft will be forced to compete on features with some low end OS that just beats them at there own game (HINT: It won't be Linux as we know it, but it may be something that is based on it, much like the Subaru boxer engine was a knock off of the VW*). This will piss off the high end, who will move to Apple, kill MS R&D's budget and MS will be the first major company to crash and burn in the infromation age. Remember: What's good for GM is good for America? That was said at a time when 60% of the cars on the road were GM built, and the biggest threat to them (as precieved at the time) was the Sherman Anti-trust Act. BTW- Microsoft will, after releasing Visa, will announce their biggest quarter ever. Buy your stock just before the release, and sell it 3-4 months after their biggest quarter ever. Don't look back, because they won't be around much longer after that.
*Linux is the VW microbus of the software world: cheap, reliable software you can fix yourself. Just that you may end up going uphill in reverse since the reverse gear has much higher touque than first, but you know that already since you fixed the tranny yourself. Just know that thost people pointing and laughing wouln't know how great a vehicle you have, and yes, you are superior to them.
Lucid dreaming can be taught. There is a very good book The Lucid Dreamer that tells you how to do it. There are plenty of devices that detect REM sleep and start flashing LEDs, making noises, etc, that will let you know that you are dreaming. NONE of them I've seen detect brain waves, nor do any of the valid ones make that claim. The problem with lucid dreaming is that it seems to attract the same hippy "earth sprirt" crowd as the folks who think Sadonia AZ is a spiritual place just becuase of the pretty rocks and high altitude.
I haven't attempted to do it for a few years, but it does work, and if you get good at it, you can force your mind to do many intresting things. Some people claim to solve problems by trying them out in a dream first, but I really doubt it would help much, since your brain is controls the outcome and it becomes easy to gloss over things like the laws of physics and things you don't understand.
I gave up on TiVO after they wouldn't let me transfer my lifetime subscription to a new unit (only a referb at my cost) after their software upgrade turned it into a paperweight.
However, there's a standards group called Open Cable that will roll out later this year. It will allow development of new applications across all cable box platforms, and make it easier for retail set top boxes. This is how TiVO will get back in business, in my opinion. There is no way they'll be able to beat Motorola and Scientific Atlanta/Cisco on volume, cable system integration, or hardware support. Cable companies are good at just swapping out a bad box and giving you a new one (one of the few things they seem to do well. Troubleshooting is a whole other problem). How can they compete with that?
http://www.opencable.com/
Have fun waiting. Here is a helpful link. The telcos in the US actually think they are hip deep in competition, even though all they pay attention to is talk time and price. Since telecom tends to be a closed system when it comes to employment (and education), and the first thing a new feature has to do is make it through the call center scripts easily, you won't see anything new come out until it has been completly sanitized and made (mostly) useless. That, and the cell phone companies are very worried about you stealing service and listening in on other calls.
What needs to happen is a disruptive technology, like WiMAX, but the buildout of the infrastructure will be high for "carrier class" service levels, and Qualcomm, Motorola and the gang are so intrenched in the handset market, that I doubt we'll see any big changes for at least the next 10 years.
The way to see this stuff is with one of those old 3 meter dishes from the 80's. The problem is that it is likely your community has laws against such things being allowed in your yard (although most of the time you can put up a fence or something to hide it). I always said I would never live in a placee that has such restrictions (I want to put up a tower someday), but it is getting harder and harder to find a place that has no such restrictions that is affordable. The 100 acre ranch would be ideal, but not gonna happen on my salary.
They say there was a time when people wanted to see telephone and power wires because it meant progress. Now we have to hide infrastructure underground, lest we offend the eye...
Sort of like the experiment conducted by Cramerica Corporation in the mid 90's to test the viability of a beach ball oil containment system by tossing a ball of motoroil out the 5th story window of a Mahattan highrise. The test was unsuccessful (I believe the head researcher was quoted as saying "Well, that didn't work."), and there were minor injuries, but at least we all know for sure that a beach ball is not a good backup containment system for oil tankers.