I was showing a situation where Apple products were used, but Apple wasn't paying for product placement, so the logos were covered. 30 Rock is then an example of where they did pay, and the logos are visible.

I'm all for new safety standards... if they are useful. I mean we've made great strides in reducing car fatalities. They've been dropping in absolute and per captia numbers since the late 60s, and in deaths per million vehicle miles traveled since 1921, when we started keeping statistics. That's a really good thing, that while driving more than ever less people die. The major reason is better safety standards, things like mandatory seatbelts, cars that deform and crumple to absorb the energy of an impact and lessen the acceleration shock to the occupants and so on.

However, costs and benefits have to be kept in proportion. How many deaths will something likely prevent, vs what will it cost? This is not many deaths, particularly compared to the number that occur, and I have to imagine the cost will be a fair bit. Particularly in lower end cars. Not only do you need a camera, but you need a display system for it, which probably means a digital instrument cluster. That's a fair bit more up front, and more expensive to maintain.

Look at Better Off Ted. There they use Macs, presumably for aesthetic reasons, but Apple didn't give them any money or products. So there's no logos. Where the Apple logo is, instead a big sticker of a different, generic, logo has been placed.

Maybe you didn't realize Apple did it, but they did it. Look further down this thread for one example. Hollywood is greedy and they know they can get money for product placement. So they charge for it. If nobody pays, they remove logos or make generic coverings. Sometimes it is even as simply as just putting tape over the logo (you'll see that on Mythbusters). They aren't going to hand out freebies. It isn't always money directly, sometimes it is discounts (or free) products, but Hollywood gets something for that logo being shown. For consumer electronics, often it is free devices for directors, producers and so on.

Maybe your boss told you that to help reinforce the Apple RDF that everyone love Apple for all things or whatever, but it is blatantly untrue and it doesn't take much research to discover that.

Ever notice that you tend to see a lot of Apple products in TV shows and movies, and the the logos are visible? that isn't coincidence, nor is it because Hollywood likes Macs, that's because Apple paid them. If you see a product logo, money changed hands. Otherwise it'll be something generic, or the logo will be removed, or what not. They don't give freebies on that sort of things because they can, and do, make a lot of money on it.

Apple isn't the only company that does product placement, but they are by far the most common computer company that does it. Most others rarely, if ever, do it. The only recent example I can think of for another one is Dell in V for Vendetta.

So why does Apple do this? Because they want to create the image in people's minds that apple are what all the cool, good looking, people (who actors in shows invariably are) use. It is an image thing with the brand. They want people to see it all the time, used by the hero characters. That leads people to form the opinion that they might want to own one.

They wouldn't spend the money doing it if they didn't believe it was effective.

That wouldn't stop someone fro suing and dragging along an expensive case. Their shady lawyers would argue gross negligence and keep fighting and fighting. Eventually, a settlement would probably be the cheapest, though still expensive, option.

Costco has deep pockets, meaning that they'd be a tempting target for a suit, even though it would be a bullshit one. Particularly since the lawyer could play the PR battle. Roll out the crying mother who's child had been killed or given a debilitating condition by the evil corporate scumbags who had pushed out that tainted peanut butter. Doesn't matter that it is bullshit, matters what the public hears. Costco's business takes a major hit for no reason and there's fuck-all they can do about it.

So better to just avoid it entirely.

There are a lot of things you could easily do right now that you don't, and not because of laziness. Like power generation. You could generate your own power, right now. No new tech is needed, everything is on the mass market. Generac will happily sell you a generator sufficient to power your entire house. You can even get them so that they feed off of the natural gas line, and thus you don't need a separate fuel contract. What's more, this isn't rare. Generac sells these all the time as backup generators to people who live in areas prone to power failure. People drop 4-5 figures to have everything set up so that when line power dies, they stay powered. On the bigger side of things, data centers buy huge ones to make sure their computers never go dark.

Ok well these places already have generators. They are installed, ready, and capable of providing power. So, they go off the grid right, generate their own energy? No, basically never. Well why not? Why spend the money for the backup and not just use it all the time? Because it is cheaper to buy line power. Those generators, impressive as they may look, cannot compete with the behemoths that produce line power. The massive plants with multi-stage turbines just do a much more efficient, and thus cheaper, job of generating electricity.

This holds true for just about everything. You find that the cost to produce something at home, using equipment of that size, is just not near as cheap as producing it in large quantities using big industrial equipment.

So perhaps we will see the day when 3D printers truly can print anything (I'm somewhat doubtful, it would really take a technology advancement so much as to be a completely different thing) but it is likely to then be a luxury, not the way everything is done. You would be able to have your 3D printer/replicator/UC/whatever print you something and have it right away, but the cost in doing so in terms of materials, energy, and so on would result in a product more expensive than if you ordered the same thing from Amazon. So those that have money might use it for convenience, or to get things more to custom spec, but mass production is still likely to be the thing.

Guy is one of, if not the, best at assembly optimization, particularly as it pertains to videogames. So if what you want is something that is fast, stable, and highly optimized, well he's one of the best around.

It is highly unlikely Doom would have ever been able to exist at the time it did, were it not for his expertise in optimizations.

Their hardware is known to do what it is advertised to do, be reasonably well built, and not have a bunch of BS tie-ins. If you buy a MS keyboard or mouse, well that's what you get. You don't have to install "Bing, for your Mouse!" or some shit like that to make it work. You plug it in to the computer, it does its thing. It isn't prevented from working under Linux or anything like that. I know plenty of Linux types that do not care for MS software, but like their hardware.

And they thought it would be the real world.

It seems most BTC proponents are either people who are scammers, traders trying to make a quick buck, or true believers with an extremely poor understanding of economics. Most of the true believer types think that BTC would be great because there would be no taxes to pay on them and taxes are evil!

They never bothered to think about the fact that the government isn't likely to just give up on trying to collect taxes, nor what would happen to society if taxes were not able to be collected. It is just a selfish "I could have more money without doing anything, and so I like it!" attitude.

Particularly Oculus. I mean the thing is in the prototype stage, and has nothing really in the way of unique technology. Plenty of 3D headsets have been done before, and all the screens, processors, sensors, and so on they are using are off the shelf shit.

Well guess what? You can buy a lot of that for $2 Billion. You can also hire a lot of engineers, developers, and so on. I'd venture to say with a budget like that you could probably beat them to market, given how glacially slow their development has been.

I really can't see how there is anywhere near that kind of value to this. It has no market share, no product, it is just a concept in development.

Any sort of in game currency where there isn't any value isn't going to be an issue since, well, there's no value. Now I know WoW gold is sold by Chinese farmers, but over all it is a zero value item. Blizzard doesn't allow sales, they'll ban you if you buy or sell, etc, etc. It isn't the kind of thing anyone buys as an investment or speculation or anything. It also isn't worth very much, and you find most IRS rules exempt things under a certain amount.

Particularly if YOU don't buy or sell it then there isn't really any issue. They aren't going to come after you for something you never exchange for currency, if for no other reason than they aren't going to monitor it at all.

In general game currency is likely to be left alone just because the amounts aren't likely to get that high. Plus most games have a highly inflationary economy. There is no limit to money, there's no "Horde Reserve Bank" that issues gold. The game just generates it whenever you do something that is programmed to give gold, and you can do it as much as you like. So buying gold to hold on to would basically always be a money losing proposition.

And it blows open in the wind, I can just hop on in to your house and nose around?

The answer, in case you are wondering, is no. While you should take precautions to secure your house, your failure to do so is not the same as permission to enter or do as I please.

I'd say I personally want more information before determining who is the psycho. I have on more than one occasion seen a person claim that they have a psycho who is out to get them, only to discover that the person making the claim is the one who's psycho, not the person who's allegedly out to get them. Or, sometimes, both are psycho.

There's a situation like that where I work. One of the advisers HATES the head secretary. She will tell anyone who will listen about what an evil bitch the secretary is and so on and so forth. Ya well, observational evidence does not bear this out. In fact it shows the opposite is true, the adviser is the source of the issues and is the one who's being a jerk.

So not claiming that this lady's story is untrue, but I'm not willing to believe it without some more verification. Particularly in light of the other trivial issues like the hula-hoop thing. Often a sign of psycho behaviour is making a big deal out of little things.

That doesn't seem to be claimed. You have to remember, some people like to show off and have fun. Back in my partying days I saw all kinds of people, men and women, do all kinds of things that they enjoyed doing, but also with the intention of having an audience. That was part of the reason they were doing them at a party, in public. They wished for an audience. Also people usually did watch because, well, when something is going on it is natural to watch. One of my friends loved to breathe fire, he'd get some 151 in his mouth, hold a lighter near it, and spew it out, causing it to catch fire. Looked pretty impressive and always drew a crowd.

So ya, if the women were pushed in to then and/or if men were making inappropriate comments then I see a problem. However if the women decided it would be fun to do and the men watching because it was something going on then I don't see a problem.