I can't believe that no one's ever thought of this. The solution is simple: a national (or international even), publicly accessible database of all products and services. It would treat all products, services and companies the same, list all the relevant info, be sortable and searchable by product details (size, color, performance, etc.), contain pictures, reviews, even videos of it being used (like on ThinkGeek) instead of flashy ads that look like hollywood movies showing how cool the thing is with special effects, dramatic camera angles, catchy music, stupid jokes, repetitive slogans, and people looking oh-so-happy now that they have that product, or implications that said product will improve your love/sex life. You could easily compare any of them side by side, and when a company has a new product they want the public to know about, like in your example, they simply send the relevant details to whatever agency handles the database. It'd be accessible online, over the telephone, or you could have a catalogue of a certain category (say, mid-sized cars, or personal computers, or local pizza places) mailed to you for the cost of printing and mailing it, in case you really can't get to a internet capable computer (pretty rare these days), or somehow prefer hardcopy.

But of course economics makes the world go round, right? And it's far too late to stop this multi-billion dollar locomotive now. Too bad, because I'd love a service like this, and for my TV, radio, and Internet to be free of stupid ads once and for all.

I don't know about other people, but I use my HDMI port all the time. With 16 GB internal and a 32 GB sd card, I can carry entire seasons of tv shows and plenty of movies as well at normal resolutions and take them over to my friends' or family's place to watch on their TV. Even HD stuff I can carry enough to watch in one evening, and that not even getting into having more cards which are easy to carry. Much better than carting around DVD cases. My phone can also do Dolby 5.1 if the movie or show has that, so the port allows that as well. Plus it's useful for showing those beautiful HD movies I take with the camera on the phone on a nice big TV rather than just a computer monitor. And yes, high-res photos do look good on the TV as well. And all this on a poor little 680 MHz ARM 11, does just fine. So I find it much more useful than you are making it out to be. And I didn't have to buy the converter, it came with the phone.

This is the Nokia N8 I'm talking about, in case you're interested.

It's called Technocracy, where not only would you not have to worry about being paid, but everything would be open source anyway. What programmer wouldn't love that, the ability to code to your heart's content, on whatever project you want, whenever you want?

Pat: Well, what we need, Susan, is we need money to build an interstellar cruiser. Now, this space ship will be able to travel through a wormhole and deliver the message and glory of Jesus Christ to those godless aliens. Send your money now. Amen.

South Park 3:11

This is the same debate as the old question of whether or not I am more free if there is no law saying that I can't kill you or not. Sure, if there is no such restriction of that freedom, it is more "free" for me, the first iteration, but I am taking away the freedom of others. This makes it less "free" in the bigger picture. Same thing with GPL/BSD: one gives more freedom initially by allowing you to take away the freedom of others. So I think that debating whether which is more "free" is philosophical at best, semantics at worst. The real, pragmatic question is which benefits society better? Well for that answer, look at the laws of most societies: they seem to agree that taking away some freedoms to protect others is generally a good idea. How much is of course a huge matter of debate, but without this we'd be down to some darwinian survival-of-the-ones-who-screw-others-over-the-most.

Thank you for taking the time to post this. A lot of people don't see what the big deal is because they either can't see the long-term implications of things like this, or they get hung up on other issues (like their child seeing nipples). This helps clarify the issue a lot, and yes, strikes firmly at the core of free speech and hence democracy. Good job.

I've noticed the "ihateaprilfools" tag a couple of times now, and I hope that /. doesn't take that too seriously. I for one (yeah, yeah) like them, even if they do vary in quality (everything does). I'd hate to see this go away because of a few nofunniks that frankly if they didn't like it so much, they can just avoid the site for a day. And the Ponies gag was pure gold, still my favorite! Especially since the site that inspired it (cute overlord) responded back by say how "cute" geeks were! LOL

It isn't hard, it just costs money (which apparently they're willing to throw at this problem anyway, so...), which most schools don't have enough of. On top of that, traditional thinking in education also keeps good ideas down. I've seen effective teaching methods used in various places, usually only by single teachers, or by specialty schools that cost more or aren't publicly funded. And these techniques are widely dispersed, since education is typically governed on the local level, so they see little propagation. If we could gather up these techniques, consolidate them, pay to put them into all schools and universities (for training teachers to use them), then you'd see a world of difference in how well kids did in school (and life). Intrinsic motivators can be fostered if done right, but our whole societal paradigm revolves around extrinsic rewards and punishments, so these ideas have a hard time propagating. I won't even get into the bad influence that most parents have on this effect, but that can be at least partly countered by proper education, which would only increase over generations.

And how about the curriculum itself? How many times have I seen on /. that many people here agree that teaching things like logic and philosophy would be beneficial? I'd add to that communication skills (how many problems in our society begin with misunderstandings and people not being clear, or not listening properly?), and emotional strategies like anger and stress management. There are good ideas out there that can help everyone, and should be part of everyone's "basic training" growing up, but they generally only get taught in specialty classes or by therapists long after problems develop.

You can also look at it like perfectly standard problem-solving: do you find the root of the problem, and solve it there, or simply apply band-aid solutions such as this one, fixing the symptoms only and leaving the core problem in place? This is like trying to cure the measles by covering up each individual spot as they appear.

This is exactly what Technocracy has been saying for over 80 years. They were the first to "treat the economy like a physics problem", the only difference is that they saw it coming and warned us way back when it was far easier to do something about it. Now, whether we can do something about it without too much pain is in question, but if we can then we have to do something about it now while we still can. Like one commenter said here earlier, "The only way out is a radical reform of the fundemental way our economy is _defined_". Technocracy has provided a logical answer to this too that is worth checking out. It needs a bit of updating since the movement is so small right now, but the underlying basis for it all is still quite sound. If you want a good scientific way of looking at our economy, and how it relates to our environment, then this is the place to start. I'm glad to see more modern research being done that confirms this.

I've had my keyboard now since around 1996 or so, so it's an old serial connector type (but it came with a ps/2 convertor). I've never liked anything I've seen since better: Silitek SK-6000 Ergonomic Keyboard It's a bit like a MS Natural keyboard, but has so much more. Duplicate Tab and Backspace keys in between the two halves of the main keys are handy and speed things up (although sometimes when I have to use a different keyboard I'll end up typing "b" instead of backspacing, or worse yet just hitting the hard plastic in the middle of a MS Natural because I'm used to using this other key). It has a touchpad (that I don't really use), 2 "Windows" keys, an "Application" key (opens context sensitive menu depending on application), a built-in wrist-rest, and the bast part of all is that the legs (which can be adjusted to two different heights) are located at the front of the keyboard, not the back! I mean, why do they put the legs in the back anyway? That just makes my hands bend even more at the wrist, and thus it's worse. This way, the front of my keyboard is raised, putting it at more of an angle that my hands are at, keeping my wrists straight. I mean, has anyone ever seen another keyboard do this, because I'm a little worried about when my dies, I'll want a comparable replacement. It's hard to go back to inferior equipment, ya know? ;)

Oh, and as you can see from the pix it has one of those old Apple power keys too. Not that I use that either, but I thought someone may like that.

And mine doesn't have the Dell logo on it either, since I got it from somewhere else.

After my divorce, all she left me were me bones.