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03/03/09
And I would love to have the e-wallet here.
03/03/09
Personally i prefer Gtalk, but since not many of my friends are willing to let go of their other clients, i use Digsby to stay in touch.
still, good reading!
03/03/09
03/03/09
they are hated.
03/03/09
03/03/09
@MadCrazy: I'm assuming that this stems from the "Technological superpower" comment. Grimace as much as you like from across the pond, it's not an exaggeration.
03/03/09
03/03/09
03/03/09
+1 I have the same model, sitting in my bedside table, waiting for a run. Of course I will never install that god-aweful sony software again, so i'm stuck with the music I listened to in 8th/10th grade.
03/03/09
03/03/09
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03/03/09
The Mini-disc sounds great. You'd think it'd be the next logical step from CD's (like DVD's to Blu-ray).
This was a good list and I thought everything fit but the next gen messaging. There is not one person I know who doesn't use Windows Live/Msn messenger. Most have never heard of AIM
03/03/09
03/03/09
Make that thriving above-ground middle-class public transportation. I imagine the NYC subway system is deep enough at some points that the signals wouldn't be able to pierce down through all the dirt and concrete without underground repeaters being set up.
03/03/09
03/03/09
Seriously? Outdated? What outdated Laserdisc a minute after they came out? VHS? DVD's were barely a pipe dream at this point. MD's weren't outclassed until MP3 players came out.
There's a difference between "Outdated" and "sold miserably in North America". Both techs were technologically superior to anything available.
03/03/09
Laserdiscs had several problems that kept it from going anywhere in the US. VHS prices had finally hit the point where they were readily affordable by the masses, and then LD shows up with the return of $100-per-title pricing. That's okay for a seriously blown-out special edition, but not for general releases.
The discs themselves were huge and cumbersome, which makes disc-killing scratches a persistent danger. And given theose sky-high prices, and the fact that these came stored in sleeves rather than proper cases, it was a tough pill to swallow for most people.
Short runtimes were a mood-killer. Where DVD can get a movie that runs over three hours on a single dual-layer read surface, and VHS could handle about 2.5 hours on an extra-long tape, laserdiscs could only fit about half an hour per side (the extended edition of Lord of the Rings would require 13 double-sided LDs, and that's just for the movies w/ audio commentaries...and buying TV series on LD would require special high-strength flooring).
Finally (and I witnessed this first-hand), the sheer size and weight of these discs created problems that most DVD-owners simply aren't aware of. I had a college film class where the professor rented a laserdisc title out of Chicago. Imagine his (and our) surprise when he stepped up in front of the class and pulled the laserdisc out of the sleeve...to find a hole the size of a quarter punched through the the read surface. Yeah, all that extra weight and size makes it a lot easier to cause catastrophic incidental damage.
In addition to all of those things, I suspect that, due to skipping problems that aren't as much of an issue on DVDs, Laserdiscs were probably set up for a read profile similar to a vinyl record, where you start at one point and simply read in a spiral until the track ends. Put a scratch on the disc, and it's like dropping a brick in the path of ants that are returning to the nest. DVDs split the data up into chunks that are non-adjacent, so even if you lose one chunk, a good player can simply skip to the next one.
03/03/09
I remember back when I was about 10 y/o or so and saw my first LD player I asked, "can you record on it?" When I found out that the answer was "no", I didn't want one anymore.
Despite relative low quality with VHS, the fact is that you just had to buy one machine to both play videos from the store and to record your own (and to play back home movies, too).
And remember the quality of the average TV back then? It wasn't exactly killer, and so comparing VHS to Laserdisc wasn't quite so dramatic. (I'm talking about the average home here, not the videophile's home theater).
03/03/09
03/03/09
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03/04/09
03/03/09
Maybe a find/replace is in order?
03/03/09
MSN/AIM/ICQ...who gives a fuck, get Trillian.
03/03/09
02/05/09
02/04/09
02/04/09
02/04/09
I just can't wait for a time when electricity and clean energy are rife, clean air....mmmmmm. Knowing that using energy is not damaging anything, so i can use things without any 'guilt'.....twenty years from now the world will be a very different place, especially when considering China is making HUGE efforts to come out of the recession in a 'green' way
02/04/09
02/04/09
02/04/09
Most plants are coal or natural gas powered in the US. Not OIL powered anyway.
I think you mean cleaner energy sources here. It's going to be a LONG time until we're really off of oil.
But, what about the noise pollution from windmills? Or, you know, the fact that they kill birds? Even wind power isn't perfect here.
I'm glad we're pursuing alternative fuel sources, but I can tell you that ethanol is a sham and yet another way to starve poor people.
What we need, is energy from space!
02/04/09
02/04/09
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02/04/09
In Michigan, we have these things called "clouds". That and the blanket of snow that's likely to be covering the solar panels during the winter months means that solar panels are pretty much just a fancy way to dress up your roof for most of the year. I understand the whole thing with being able to sell excess home-generated power back to the company (and indeed, I didn't think it required a new law for that to work). It's just that solar power would be a lot more cost-effective if we were, say, a desert. Wind-power would make more sense, especially given how much coastline we have, but people don't like having those things parked in their backyards.
No, the only way you're likely to be able to sell solar power back to the power company while living in Michigan is if you cover every square inch of your property in solar panels and go on vacation for most of the summer. Otherwise it'll just cut down on your power bill a little bit.