Obligatory: http://xkcd.com/292/

Is it false advertising if they trump up attributes which cannot be measured (because they don't exist)? My diamond lined ethernet cables give taller ones and rounder zeroes than the next leading brand!

Hmm, at the time I purchased I hadn't looked at a lot of other brands, so I just assumed other brands offered similar. I expect to purchase a newer model in the next few years... hopefully someone will have picked up the slack by then.

I could understand this in an english class maybe, trying to teach presentation skills. But I actually encountered the same bullshit approach in a fourth-year university lecture on real-time systems. The class was divided into groups of 3, and each were given half a lecture period to teach a section. Besides the fact that many students lacked any presentation skills and had troublesome accents, most groups ran over time. My group never presented because we were one of the last few chapters and there were too few remaining lecture periods.

Look for "professional" model TVs. I purchased my current panasonic 720p 50" plasma from on online retailer (8 years old now) for a little bit cheaper than a similar sized, normal-featured retail model. It is just as you described, except that instead of dedicated ports, it actually has three interchangeable "input" cards that you can purchase and install on the back. My model came with an HDMI card and a component card, and I additionally purchased a composite card to support older consoles. Still works great. It is similar to the product linked by ihtoit... I'm not at home so I don't have the model number.

My assumption would be that they are trying to sell a product that is advertised as "hands free". It is a TV after all... if you have to push a button you might as well hit the other one or two to set your channel.

On a Watch List? That's a paddlin'.

Yup. If you hear a new song, chances are very high that you can immediately acquire that song easily and legally through one of many different distribution channels available. If you see a movie trailer for a recently released movie, your only legal option is the theatre. The business model of the two mediums are wildly different.

I also bought my cable modem from an electronics retailer when I signed up with TekSavvy. The ISP will actually give you a discount on account activation if you buy it directly from them for a similar price, which I assume is them passing on the product markup. Things could be better, but it is not so bad as the GP paints it. Definitely better than the US overall.

The CRTC makes some mistakes, but at least they are helmed by a public servant, while the FCC is currently run by telco lobbyist. Yeah "we" are really jealous.

That's not true at all. The current government been undermining Statistics Canada since taking office. Soon the quality of data surrounding these issues will be so poor that they can just say the problem doesn't exist anymore.

This is very true. When my wife first got her BB she was ecstatic about being "in the BBM club" with her friends who had BBs, and this in an era when you only got 75 free texts with a minimal phone plan. BBM wasn't available for either iPhone or Android then, but I definitely would have picked it up if it had been. BB milked their proprietary messaging service as long as it was popular, and only put it on other platforms when their market share started shrinking. Now they fault other companies for doing the same thing.

Now my wife still has a BB but no longer gives a shit about BBM. Just like no one will care about iMessage when the iPhone finally starts losing share, nor will it draw any users back to the iPhone.

Car enthusiasts who were also audiophiles were surveyed to find out what they thought about the synthesized engine noise. They all complained that the sound wasn't pure enough without Monster cables delivering the full spectrum of "whooshiness" to the speakers.

It worked for Netflix, it will probably work for Amazon. They are buying the content from actual film studios rather than producing it themselves, so it just comes down whether or not they can buy shows that will be popular. Some of the "Netflix-original" content is pretty good.