Everywhere I've lived the line fee is an extra $10. If the cable company offers a "basic TV" package for just $10 (they never have where I've lived) it's just the OTA stations + public access anyway. You get hd with an antenna but not with basic cable and I don't care about public access. So if it's worth it to get the lowest tier cable, go for it whether you watch it or not. Otherwise just pay the line fee and consider the cable company your "internet company."

I hear myself and many of my peers say "grab a soda from the fridge for me." This may, however, be regional in use. Only when I lived in the southeast did 'coke' ever seem like a generic term. In the midwest, the generic is 'pop.'

I don't think I've ever asked someone to xerox something, and everything I knows calls that machine a 'copier.' I don't remember ever working somewhere with a Xerox-brand copier anyway. I think I've heard my grandmother refer to her vacuum cleaner as a 'hoover,' even though it's another brand, but not my parents or any friends/coworkers my age. To me 'xerox' is similar: something old people might say. (I understand 'hoover' is pretty common among the Brits, though.)

There seems to be a definite subset of 25-35-years-olds who are resisting 'google' as a verb. Not that any of these same people would go to anyplace other than google if I suggested they "search the web" for something. My parents and their peers (50-70 age range) seem to have completely adopted 'google' as a verb.

'Kleenex' is hard to argue. I have, however, heard proper southern ladies say "Could you hand me a tissue?" when sitting at the opposite end of a couch from the box of Kleenex. Too bad, since I find Puffs to be the superior tissue. Kleenex brand always seems to flake away paper dust that just makes you keep sneezing.

If I understand things correctly, US businesses must accept US currency for debts. So if you provide a service where payment isn't due until after services are rendered, you must accept US currency for that debt. If you sell goods retail (including counter-service food) you can choose to accept or refuse any method of payment, since there is no debt involved.

So if you must pay for your $5 cheeseburger with a $50, looks like you'll have to find someplace that will serve your order before you pay.

Hmmm... Your comment implied to me that you thought customers who would otherwise never buy Blu-ray would go ahead and buy the Blu-ray/DVD pack, thereby "hooking" them on Blu-ray. You also implied that Disney is "giving Blu-ray discs away free." This would only be true if Disney DVDs were *only* available in the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack, which (so far) isn't true. As it stands now, the Blu-ray/DVD combo pack is $5-10 more expensive than the DVD alone.

My reply merely stated that they're not creating a new Blu-ray customer by bundling. They just found a gimmick to get existing Blu-ray customers to buy kids' movies on Blu-ray too.

Really? Just save an extra $25 into your savings account and use the $25 rebate debit to buy groceries that week. It's $25, not $200. Whine much?

In a shopping mall, it's not completely unusual for an American to carry around a lot of cash. American ATMs usually give out nothing but $20 bills, so larger bills always seem somewhat exotic. Furthermore, when you tender a $50 or larger note in a situation where you'll get more than 60% of that note back in change, it usually throws off the change in the till, which may have as little as $100 total inside it at the beginning of a shift (and contain nothing larger than $5 bills).

The look from the cashier probably wasn't so much about the $100 bill itself, but about using a $100 bill to pay for (I'm assuming) less than $10 worth of ice cream.

Nope. It's just a way to actually get anyone to buy kids' movies on Blu-ray.

These are kids movies. Kids nowadays watch movies non-stop in the car. Effectively no one has a Blu-ray player in their car. Geeky dad with his cool home theater wants to buy movies on Blu-ray, but he's smart enough to know that the kids' movies need to be on DVD so they work in the car. He's not insane enough to buy one Blu-ray copy and one DVD copy since it's just a kids' movie.

So Disney's great idea is to include the DVD in the same package as the Blu-ray so geeky dad will spend the extra $5-10 on the Blu-ray ('cuz it's cool) even though only the DVD (in the car) will actually ever get watched.

Parents without a Blu-ray player will just buy the plain DVD.

It's not the seller's shadow account I'm worried about, it's the stupid eBay bidders who can't decide how much they're willing to pay.

If you place a bid early, it gives the idiots days to decide "oh I guess I can spend a little more." This just inflates prices (which is what eBay wants and what sellers want). If everyone waits until the last possible moment and just bids whatever they are *actually willing to pay* then the item goes to the buyer who actually perceived the item to have the greatest value, instead of some dope who keeps convincing himself to spend just $5 more.

People who bid early are just fueling other people to outbid them and artificially driving up prices.

Oh, I dunno...

1. 1. The hours you practiced, without compensation, to get to the point to where you could record the music in the studio without wasting too much time with retakes.
2. 2. The years you practiced, without compensation and possibly paying someone else for lessons, trying to get good enough that you could actually record something someone else wants to listen to and (hopefully) purchase.
3. 3. If you're an instrumentalist: the instrument you had to buy, accessories (strings, etc.), and periodic repairs to keep that instrument in good working order.

Just to name a few.

Other than musician and surgeon, there really aren't many professions I can think of where you're expected buy equipment and learn how to use it at your own cost, then perform essentially flawlessly the first time every time or you'll soon lose your job.

manbearpig?

You didn't do so well in that marketing class, did you?

Nah. It just shot the tonearm off the record. Never could make it all the way through that one without a stack of pennies to weigh it down.

If your video card has a secondary output, you're ready to go.

1. Download Hulu Desktop.
2. Run an HDMI cable from the second output of your video card to your TV.
3. Get a media center remote for the computer.

Done.

Ask your local police department if you need to subscribe to phone service to dial 911. In many locations you'll still get a dial tone if your phone service has been disconnected. In those cases, you can usually only dial 2 phone numbers: the local phone company (to set up service) or 911.

If you want the technology to improve, donate your speech!.