The tech industry has been flirting with smart watches and the like for years now, despite nearly all of the market research showing that people generally aren't excited about it. At all. The whole reason people stopped wearing actual watches was because they started carrying phones with them, rendering the watch redundant. I think the industry knows it's bleeding itself dry with smartphones since they can't keep making them bigger (which is largely how they have kept prices up), and tablets have proven to be too limited in scope to necessitate frequent upgrades (my 10" android from 3 years ago still does what I bought it to do). I just don't see this market blossoming at all, but I guess all the manufacturers are afraid of missing the boat on the Next Big Thing so they're pouring money into wearables anyway. Which means we'll probably have to deal with 3 to 5 years of crappy or niche devices being hyped up by paid reviewers and pro sponsors, until a bean counter somewhere says enough is enough.

Considering the ratio of decent to crappy movies is something like 1:50, I can't imagine this being a very good job. There has to be something like 200 hours of Asylum "mockbusters" alone. I stopped subscribing after watching the handful of quality TV shows and the very rare somewhat-newish-release movies dried up. At this point, I can honestly say they couldn't pay me enough to watch Netflix.

It's definitely possible. My observation is simply that the money would be more effective addressing some of the underlying reasons these kids can't or don't want to read, rather than on a for-profit service designed to encourage already proficient readers to read more and hoping for some excess funds to trickle down to the kids who really need it. The thing is -- and this is something that most teachers really can't talk about professionally for PC reasons -- a child's success in school is influenced primarily by their home environment, and is often set in motion years before they start kindergarten. Simply offering a new reading program in the school will do very little if there isn't some heavy reinforcement at home.

Correct, but that doesn't solve the problem of people in those communities having the means of using the free subscription, not to mention jump through whatever hoops are required to be granted access. Most families in that situation don't have great access to a home computer, and trying to get them to make regular trips to whatever library still exists in the area to use those computers isn't much more likely. The subscription -- although definitely a hurdle -- isn't really the major issue. It's how the money is being targeted.

The problem with (new) Reading Rainbow is that it will end up targeting and catering to kids that are already interested and proficient in reading, due to those kids being in families able to buy into the subscription. Twenty years ago, it worked because even poor families generally had at least a single crappy TV with rabbit ears, which was enough to get PBS. That 4 or 5 million that ends up getting raised would go a lot further by addressing actual core issues with poverty, rather than giving kids who already know and like to read even more reason to do so.

I never said it was a good idea, just that it's what's happening. I also don't believe these people give a shit about the long term. They keep framing every "battle" like the nation will die tomorrow if we don't kick the Mexicans out, or allow abortions, or whatever. It's all about *now* for them.

Republicans don't actually need to win a presidential election. They just need to control enough of congress to block or hinder any kind of meaningful social progression. The Tea Party knows this, which is why they really don't care about fielding an "electable" candidate.

Student loans are typically 10 year repayments.

Virtual property.

You must not play many PC games outside of the niche indie market.

But not for any nefarious reasons. The depth of field effect, in particular, messes with the gameplay in unexpected ways. Stuff like not being able to find a camera easily because it's more than 20 feet away and blurred out. Or when you're in a gunfight and everyone not right next to you are blurred out. That kind of thing. It's great for screenshots, and very tightly-controlled situations, but I wasn't impressed with how it felt in terms of gameplay.

Except the term redskin isn't referencing their skin color.

It just seems like the options down the road for media that can store 4k are a bit limited. Streaming seems out of the question when we can't even get consistent 1080p streams out to people. Blu Ray would need some major overhauls unless people want to have 4k movies come on 10 to 20 disks, and something tells me people aren't going to rush out to embrace a new media format even if it did get that overhaul. I just can't help but think 4k tech will have to be targeted at niche industries like photo editing and maybe CAD type stuff. I could also see a push towards the medical industry. But the average consumer? Not happening.

I guess it's a good thing this guy wasn't set out to solve your problem then. He identified a market (not yours) and went for it.

1200 images per second at a resolution of 336x96... That was a low resolution even for 2002.