Dumbed down consumer electronics: Adding DTV channels
in [Design]
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From: Joerg on 4 Aug 2010 17:53 Joel Koltner wrote: > Hi Joerg, > > "Joerg" <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> wrote in message > news:8btlubF2eqU1(a)mid.individual.net... >> Not a joke, unfortunately: Friends bought a new minivan so that grandson >> can watch VHS tapes while they were driving. I think it all goes a bit >> far in today's society. We don't have kids but I certainly would not do >> that. > > When I was a kid, we occasionally made the 1500 mile (3 days, or > sometimes 2 really long days) trip to my grandparents in Naples, Florida > starting from Middleton, Wisconsin. Neither of my parents was > particularly interested in talking, playing games, or otherwise > interacting all that horribly much with my brother and me on those > trips, so it was up to us to keep ourselves entertained. Books were > available but reading them tended to make me car sick, and otherwise > there were cassette tapes (but only 2 or 3 -- couldn't afford much of > anything pre-recorded), the radio (out in the boonies of, e.g., > Kentucky, not a whole lot there!), or -- later on -- two electronic > games: Simon and Split Second. > > I would have loved to have had movies and a *large*, randomly accessible > music collection as I do today... > Our trips where up to 500 miles in this car, made by Borgward (except ours was blue): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lloyd602.jpg The back was stuffed to the hilt, parents up front and me and my sister in back sitting on the stuff (younger brother wasn't born yet). Once we were stopped and the police made us enter a trucker's weigh station -> whoops, heavily overloaded. There was also a heavy tent packed on a roof rack ... The car didn't have a radio, it wasn't even geared for that. We kept busy with simple games and stuff, mostly. Usually we started at 3:00am to avoid traffic, and us kids snoozed through the first 250 miles. When my younger brother was born the little Lloyd was simply too smal and we had this one: http://www.carsablanca.de/Bilderstrecke/ford-12m-p4-der-taunus-der-aus-den-staaten-kam/6#pathway It was developed in the US but deemed "too small" here. Other times US-linked European companies such as Ford, Opel or Vauxhall seemed to use American drawings, multiply everything by 0.7 or so, and replace the V8 with a straight-4 of less than 1.5 liters. >> I will never buy a Kindle. I mean, first you pay $150-200, then you are >> perfectly vendor-locked to buy e-books from Amazon. No way. If I ever >> felt the urge to read an e-book out by the pool I'd use the netbook. > > I do read the occasional eBook on my phone. I see some value in Kindles > and similar (the LCDs on those create far less eye strain than reading > off of a traditional backlit LCD), but not the $150+ they currently want > for them -- and I agree with you completely that vendor lock-in is > quite the drawback: the ever-so-slightly discounted price you pay on the > eBook vs. the dead tree version doesn't make up for not being able to > pass it along to someone else when you're done. > > A co-worker here keeps multiple copies of the bible (different languages > and different translations) on his iPhone and finds it enjoyable to read > the different versions and to be able to do a little "compare and > contrast"... and I imagine that being able to almost instantly search > for any text phrase with wildcards, etc. is even better than a concordance. > Our pastor has something similar on a Palm Pad. I prefer the netbook. It has a much brighter display, backlit with LED. >> But then they must let you out of the 2-year agreement for free or you >> could drag them to court. Breach of contract and all that. After all, >> _they_ also signed on the dotted line :-) > > Yep, and you occasionally see people asking about using these unwritten > rules as a "strategic" exit from their contracts. Apparently it works, > if you're careful that you haven't given them any other reason through > which they can hold you to the contract. I suppose this is one of the > reason that the telcos no longer advertise as many "unlimited" plans and > instead call it something like the "everything" plan with the fine print > then spells out the limits. > > [56k modems] > >> Last but not least, >> people often ignore a backup plan. Most of our neighbors will not know >> how to access their email when the DSL goes down. Even if they did know >> they couldn't because they foolishly sold their modem at a garage sale >> years ago for 50 cents. > > ...plus most DSL or cable modem plans no longer come with traditional > dial-up service anyway, so even if they still had the knowledge and > technical know-how it wouldn't have helped... > AT&T does, at least out here. If not, it's best to have a backup service somewhere, some sort of cheap dial-in service. You can always go to the next Internet cafe, but so will everyone else and if the power outage is major that won't help. -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
From: Joel Koltner on 4 Aug 2010 18:12 "Joerg" <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> wrote in message news:8bu5quF46qU1(a)mid.individual.net... > Our trips where up to 500 miles in this car, made by Borgward (except > ours was blue): > > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lloyd602.jpg > > The back was stuffed to the hilt, parents up front and me and my sister > in back sitting on the stuff (younger brother wasn't born yet). Wow... we had a good-sized cooler that sat between my brother and me when we were little that contained breakfast, lunch, and dinner; by the time we hit about high school that was seriously impinging on any "personal space" we might have had left, but thankfully my parents also decided about then that, OK, we'll just have fast food and in the grand scheme of things the additional $50 or so was nothing in the overall cost of the trip. > Once we > were stopped and the police made us enter a trucker's weigh station -> > whoops, heavily overloaded. There was also a heavy tent packed on a roof > rack ... Might possibly have prevented a nasty accident there! > The car didn't have a radio, it wasn't even geared for that. We kept > busy with simple games and stuff, mostly. Usually we started at 3:00am > to avoid traffic, and us kids snoozed through the first 250 miles. Only 250 "waking" miles wouldn't have been so bad at all... [Internet backup service] > AT&T does, at least out here. If not, it's best to have a backup service > somewhere, some sort of cheap dial-in service. But if the power outage lasts for more than, e.g., a day, the phone lines are probably all going to die anyway, aren't they? -- Only some installations have actual backup diesel generators, the rest relying on battery banks to ride through brief (hours long) blackouts? ---Joel
From: Joerg on 4 Aug 2010 18:41 Joel Koltner wrote: > "Joerg" <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> wrote in message > news:8bu5quF46qU1(a)mid.individual.net... >> Our trips where up to 500 miles in this car, made by Borgward (except >> ours was blue): >> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Lloyd602.jpg >> >> The back was stuffed to the hilt, parents up front and me and my sister >> in back sitting on the stuff (younger brother wasn't born yet). > > Wow... we had a good-sized cooler that sat between my brother and me > when we were little that contained breakfast, lunch, and dinner; by the > time we hit about high school that was seriously impinging on any > "personal space" we might have had left, but thankfully my parents also > decided about then that, OK, we'll just have fast food and in the grand > scheme of things the additional $50 or so was nothing in the overall > cost of the trip. > >> Once we >> were stopped and the police made us enter a trucker's weigh station -> >> whoops, heavily overloaded. There was also a heavy tent packed on a roof >> rack ... > > Might possibly have prevented a nasty accident there! > Nah, just a nuisance (and money for the ticket). We've made many trips that way, it was a very reliable little car, almost built like a tank. I think the reason was more that the 0.6l engine (yes, point six liters) wouldn't pull it up an incline fast enough on autobahns. That can be dangerous because a speed below 50mph usually isn't considered safe on German autobahns. They made a heavier duty van and it was the same chassis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MHV_Lloyd_LT600.jpg >> The car didn't have a radio, it wasn't even geared for that. We kept >> busy with simple games and stuff, mostly. Usually we started at 3:00am >> to avoid traffic, and us kids snoozed through the first 250 miles. > > Only 250 "waking" miles wouldn't have been so bad at all... > > [Internet backup service] > >> AT&T does, at least out here. If not, it's best to have a backup service >> somewhere, some sort of cheap dial-in service. > > But if the power outage lasts for more than, e.g., a day, the phone > lines are probably all going to die anyway, aren't they? -- Only some > installations have actual backup diesel generators, the rest relying on > battery banks to ride through brief (hours long) blackouts? > If they last that long there are usually bigger underlying issues, and then you have other worries. Like making sure older neighbors don't freeze to death in winter because their "modern" gas furnace won't work without power. -- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
From: krw on 4 Aug 2010 19:18 On Wed, 04 Aug 2010 10:22:12 -0700, Joerg <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> wrote: >Joel Koltner wrote: >> Hi Joerg, >> >> "Joerg" <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> wrote in message >> news:8brqc8Fo4eU1(a)mid.individual.net... >>> Anyhow, I don't think mankind really needs the constant din of radio at >>> all times. >> >> Sure, they don't need it, but they're perfectly willing to pay for it. >> >> Kids on long car trips today often have their choice of movies (DVD >> player or laptop), audio (iPhone or similar), or games (PSP or >> similar). That's entertainment, all right! ;-) >> > >Not a joke, unfortunately: Friends bought a new minivan so that grandson >can watch VHS tapes while they were driving. I think it all goes a bit >far in today's society. We don't have kids but I certainly would not do >that. > > >> Oh, and I suppose there are those things called "books" as well, >> although today some people will be reading them on a Kindle or laptop as >> an eBook. :-) >> > >I will never buy a Kindle. I mean, first you pay $150-200, then you are >perfectly vendor-locked to buy e-books from Amazon. No way. If I ever >felt the urge to read an e-book out by the pool I'd use the netbook. My wife just bought a Nook (B&N's version of the Kindle). She reads a couple of books a week and likes the Nook a lot. I don't know about the Kindle, but the Nook will take software from a lot of places, like the Gutenburg project and even PDFs. >>> Audio isn't very demanding in bandwidth. >> >> Compared to video, no, but it's kinda like leaving a dripping facuet >> going... a 128kbps stream listened to for, say, 5 hours a day for 20 >> days a month is 5.76GB of data per month, which is *well* beyond what >> most cell phone data plans figure you "should" be using -- even on >> "unlimited" plans. (I have an "unlimited" Sprint plan but the >> unofficial policy is that once you go past ~1GB per month, you're on >> Sprint's radar and they may chose to simply no longer offer to provide >> data services to you except at the "casual" rate of... one penny per >> *kilobyte!*.) >> > >But then they must let you out of the 2-year agreement for free or you >could drag them to court. Breach of contract and all that. After all, >_they_ also signed on the dotted line :-) The rule is in one of those dots. ;-) <snip> >I found that 56k connections only work very locally. When I did data >transfers across the pond a couple decades ago the most I could reliably >work at was 4800bd, sometimes 1200bd was required. That makes no sense. The connection rate only depends on your "last mile".
From: krw on 4 Aug 2010 19:21
On Wed, 04 Aug 2010 10:35:09 -0700, Jim Thompson <To-Email-Use-The-Envelope-Icon(a)On-My-Web-Site.com> wrote: >On Wed, 4 Aug 2010 09:52:12 -0700, "Joel Koltner" ><zapwireDASHgroups(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > >>Hi Joerg, >> >>"Joerg" <invalid(a)invalid.invalid> wrote in message >>news:8brqc8Fo4eU1(a)mid.individual.net... >>> Anyhow, I don't think mankind really needs the constant din of radio at >>> all times. >> >>Sure, they don't need it, but they're perfectly willing to pay for it. >> >>Kids on long car trips today often have their choice of movies (DVD player or >>laptop), audio (iPhone or similar), or games (PSP or similar). That's >>entertainment, all right! ;-) >> >>Oh, and I suppose there are those things called "books" as well, although >>today some people will be reading them on a Kindle or laptop as an eBook. :-) >> >[snip] > >I find "Books on Tape" (now "Books on CD") useful on long trips across >rural Arizona, where FM is pretty much non-existent and AM is mostly >Mexican; and Fox News on satellite starts repeating :-) We listened to "A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity" on a trip recently. It kept us entertained for the trip. ;-) |