Except thats simply not true anymore. Blue-rays ARE the geeky platform. I know way more non-geeks who regularly use netflix than those who play blue-rays. Now I'm sure part of it is that I'm in college so watching TV/movies on a computer screen is a lot more common. Plus pretty much everyone has a wii, xbox, or ps3 so getting netflix onto the TV is not a challange like it may be for the more senile crowd of non-geeks.

Its because installing these systems in expensive. The companies give an option, pay (making up these numbers) $800,000 to install a camera or pay 0 and give us 40% of the profits. Poor city governments are going to be far more likely to take the free plan.

This entirely depends on the city and state. I know we have a reckless driving ticket but its optional. The cop can give it for 20+ mph over in addition to the speeding ticket but usually they don't unless your pissing them off.

Which is why it will take a long long long time to ever have a driverless car in America. Your car is a part of your personality. I remember the day I got my license when I turned 16, it was my first taste of real freedom.

In a world with driverless cars will there be sports cars? Why would they even exist. Think of the classic american idea of the open road, driving down the PCH with the top down on a convertible. There is so much more to driving than the everyday commute.

There seems to be a geek tendency to hate driving that I see on slashdot all the time. Not sure where it comes from. But a lot of people love it.

Of course driverless cars do make a whole lot of sense. Even I will admit that, and I am someone who loves cars even more than I love computers (which is a lot). The way I see the transition happening is things like dedicated computer operated highways. You drive to the onramp, get into a queue, and the computer will take over control. It dumps you off at an offramp, stops the car, and you can regain control.

T-Mobile sucks. I hate when people say "oh well sprint does this" or "t-mobile has this plan." Some of us venture outside of major city centers and need coverage. T-mobile is hit or miss even in big cities a lot of times due to its use of the 1900mhz frequency which has more trouble penetrating walls than the 850/900 mhz that Verizon and AT&T (in some places) use.

Except keep in mind there is probably similar prompts in the games like "do you really want to spend these fake shrute bucks on the sword?" Yea, sure, to a tech geek its clear that the apple push notification dialog is a specific thing and not part of the app. But can you really expect a 10 year old to? There is absolutely nothing wrong with requiring a password. Even if you want to give your kid the password and say hey, anytime you enter it your spending money, so don't do it.

The candy store analogy someone made earlier is not similar at all. It would be like going into a candy store with free samples. But having another counter, looking very similar to the free samples, that are not free. And you would owe them money as soon as you ate something. And they would barely warn you first. Yea, sure you need to look out for that kind of stuff. But its predatory selling and not fair and we should not be yelling about the bad parenting involved but instead supporting companies who don't do this.

This is good for everyone. I remember back in the non smartphone days everyone always being scared of the phone because it might charge you for doing something. The people who wouldn't read text messages because they thought it would cost them money (when in fact it already had just due to the fact that you received it), not wanting to change a ringtone, etc. etc. And the thing was, it was based in truth. You press the center button on a non AT&T smartphone and boom your on the internet. Racking up per kilobyte data charges. Want to shut off internet? Well it also shuts off your ability to send MMS messages.

Apple getting away from this is a GOOD thing. You used to have to enter a credit card number every time you purchased something. It is not good for anyone to be able to do it with a single click. It is just too easy and to be spending money. A password is a great way of saying "hold on and think about what your about to do."

Yes, good parenting is teaching kids about how to watch out for scams, etc. It is not giving your 5 year old your checkbook and then sending them out on the street and yelling at them when someone takes advantage of them and they get ripped off. Which is basically what iTunes was doing.

But if they "catch" you, which they can because the SIM reports what device you are using, they will automatically enable the data plan. Not sure how long it takes for them to catch you though. I think it probably helps that you only occasionally have it on the network. They probably have a batch script that runs once a month or something looking for any smart phones registered without a data plan. Could be that it only looks for iPhones and android phones too since blackberry's have a lot more options for data plans so they may not bother.

This really is the best advice. The thing is we are tracked so much and by so many different sources that there really is no hope of maintaining privacy anymore. Sure if that was my goal, to "live off the grid," I could probably do it, but not without sacrificing most aspects of a normal life.

The thing to realize is that you blend into the background noise. In a world with nearly 7 billion people, its not hard to do that. In fact, that is in itself a type of security.

Analogy time (because I love them): If you are at a sports game and talking with your friends, are you worried about others overhearing your conversation? I mean sure, the people next to you (someone like your mom on Facebook) may hear what you are saying. But will the cop at the bottom row? Yea, sure, he could hear you if he wanted you. And watch everything you are doing. But will he? No, because you are just one person in a sea of thousands. On the other hand, what if you had a ski mask on and were whispering secretively to everyone? Yea, sure as hell he will pay attention then.

Obligatory car analogy. Do most people who buy BMW's buy them because they will use the 0-60 times and handling abilities at the track or do they buy them as a status symbol? Probably status symbol. But that doesn't take away from the fact that for those who want an amazing handling RWD car with a good amount of power and are willing to pay, the BMW is a great fit.

Oh and, further supporting the analogy, BMW's aren't the fastest. They can be out-run by some of those powerful soccer mom SUV's. But try taking that SUV to a twisty road and you will know why people pay more for a BMW.

The Mac Pro uses Xenon (server) processors and ECC ram and has plenty of room for expandability RAID and SSD options, dual NIC's etc. So in reality a Mac Pro will make a better server than pretty much all of Dell's "small business" server lineup many of which use core duo's.

Now of course a Mac Pro is no substitute for a real rack-mount server but in reality anyone with a rackmount is probably going to be using RHEL or some other enterprise linux distro. All Mac OS Server really is is a easy to use GUI in front of open source server software. Anyone with serious server needs will be paying someone to manage the server and edit all the config files etc. anyways.

I have found that many times the speakers are turned so loud at concerts that my ears are "maxing out" or something and I can no longer clearly hear the music, let alone enjoy it. This was especially true at one concert I can think of where an acoustic guitar was played over the loud speakers and the gain must have been too high or something because the speakers were audibly distorting. My ears were ringing for the next two days (no joke). I don't even want to know what kind of permanent damage that did to my ears.

Very true, although there is crossover between them. The same goes for movie buffs not caring about HD. Some do, but many watch the movie, not the pixels.

I think as better technology becomes more pervasive, things are starting to change though. Take for example Dub step. Unless you have a decent subwoofer you simply can't hear the bass line in dub step. Also, CGI is becoming an art form in itself.

Our ID card is our driver's license. We essentially have that system, the only hard part is that driver's licensing is done on a state by state basis, so there is no national ID card or number, only a state one. The only real unique national ID number we have is the social security number.

You need an SSN to get a driver's license. Or get a bank account for that matter.