Not only that, but is this pay per view on that screen or would you e.g. buy a blu-ray for $4? I might actually start buying them if that is the case (well, technically I've already started as I bought T2 on blu-ray for $5; no fucking way I'll ever spend $10 or more on a single movie disc though, and no way in hell I'll ever pay more than 50 cents for just one view.)

The US almost always suffers from the early adopter problem. That is, we get the earlier versions of standards merely because we adopt them first, and by the time Europe gets around to adopting them the technology has improved based on what was learned in the US. Note similar things like T1 equivalent E1 being faster, and given that superseding technologies (such as optical carrier) are sold in multipliers of T1 speeds, the Europe versions tend to be speced higher.

Broad adoption of standards is like a marriage: You're stuck with it, flaws and all, and changing to another incompatible one requires a lot of pain and sacrifice, with there being more pain the longer the marriage has lasted. For another perspective on this, look how much of a PITA it was to switch to digital TV, which the US actually did faster than most of the world.

And yes, I know Europe also had magnetic stripe. But like the marriage analogy they didn't have it for as long nor was it adopted as broadly before chip and pin came along, likewise switching wasn't as difficult.

There is a silver lining to our system though:

One time I saw somebody commenting on how much he hates chip and pin because it was supposedly only being pushed so that banks can force you to pay for fraudulent charges, whereas magnetic stripe they supposedly can't. The article was referring to the US adoption, and so I told him that we already have laws that strictly limit liability for consumers that mostly just make banks liable, and they aren't going away. He then lambastes me that "the rest of the world" doesn't do it that way, therefore chip and pin is evil, and I'm a stupid ignorant American for thinking that, even though the article was specifically about the US where such a problem doesn't exist.

Why doesn't it exist? Well, because us backward Americans have been on magnetic stripe for so long, that it was born out of necessity. (Which by the way, looking in his profile revealed he lived in Europe, which isn't "the rest of the world" as other non-European countries do have similar laws to the US, for the same reasons.)

Don't you just need a simple ISO7816 card reader? I remember paying $10 for those 8 years ago back in my directv hacking days. The communication method is simple serial/RS232, of which there is a Bluetooth standard for (and it works rather well with Android phones too, I've used it for OBD2 serial communication to avoid needing a wire connected under the dash.)

PayPal Here could likewise do ISO7816 via a bluetooth dongle and ask for the pin on the device itself. I don't imagine the whole thing would cost the same if not less than the present dongle they have. (My bluetooth OBD2 dongle cost me $20, and apparently the manufacturer makes a profit on it.)

I think your bank is probably more tired of it than you are as by law they are required to eat most of the liability. The good banks give you zero liability (as in, you aren't ever responsible for losses.)

I'm curious how this will work for internet transactions though, unless they expect everybody to have smartcard readers (wouldn't bother me, but buying things via smartphone or tablet will need some revamping.)

I'm wondering if Occulus could help cure somehow managing to have a duplicate post within the same posting.

Those batteries are easily going to run you an additional $80. Yes, they're that expensive. And you're probably over-pricing the keyboard and under-pricing the display. I mean what kind of display are you talking, one of those silly 1366x768 displays found in an acer vivotab? I think you'd pay a fair bit more for a display that brand new doesn't look like you let it rot in the sun for a week.

I think the difference in price would be close to $250 cheaper for one of these of equal spec, again given economies of scale.

Besides that, gaming laptops suck dick. I've owned one before, and I was ultimately disappointed as hell with it. They're so damn heavy that you never actually take them anywhere, and they burn through battery life so fast that you can't live without always carrying around a power brick. I've since then stuck with sub-$300 laptops; not only are they cheaper but they're actually portable.

Besides, what you said here applies very much to laptops:

I imagine that since you are forgoing the display and the battery found on a laptop, you could theoretically get beefier hardware for the same price. Probably not right now since these are relatively new, but given time and economies of scale (that is, if enough people buy into these) you could see these easily outperform similarly priced laptops.

I think these could also get much better if we see legit GPUs on the CPU die (namely, intel would need to either seriously step up their GPU game, or outright integrate nvidia components on die, or nvidia get into the x86 business, or AMD combine high end GPU with high end CPU rather than cheap GPU with high end CPU) and the combined APU could be easily swapped out or otherwise upgraded without throwing out the rest of the machine.

Well it's an inverse relationship. The government, and by that I mean congress and the president, does have certain control and influence of USPS. And inversely, the MPAA/RIAA does have certain control and influence over congress and especially the president.

http://boingboing.net/2012/01/...

And what use would a bluetooth headset be if your phone is jammed?

I would think so. Going 80 and rear ending somebody who is going 65 is a lot less deadly than t-boning somebody who isn't even traveling in the same direction at 45. Not only that, but there are no pedestrians on freeways.

It seemed to work fine until a natural disaster struck. On the other hand, roads have potholes and cracks in them year round, and some city governments really don't give a shit about ever fixing them.

The problem in the Sandy case is people are demanding that they rebuild a copper POTS network when nobody wants POTS service any more, and yet in these same areas not enough people are willing to pay for fiber to make it worth it to roll that out either.

Sure, in situations like what we have on slashdot, everybody wants fast broadband. Slashdot doesn't represent everybody though; a majority of meatspace has lawns to mow and aren't really interested in that internet thing unless they want to surf the playboy site or talk on facebook. Likewise, these people don't give a shit about fiber, and/or think that an HFC network or VDSL2 is fiber.

For some rather classic proof on this, call your ISP and ask about downgrading to a slower internet tier. They won't give you bandwidth numbers unless you ask for them; instead they'll jump right to some crap like "well you can download an mp3 in 30 seconds on this tier." And worse, they often also tell you that you need their fastest tier for gaming (which is full of crap, but most people don't know any better, including the people selling you the service who are just reading from a script.) You know why this is? Because 99% of those who they talk to don't even understand what a megabit is.

A lot of the pro-organic crowd doesn't seem to realize that the "evil megacorps" also provide what they buy as well, only they sell organic at a much higher profit margin. People who go out of their way to buy organic food are really quite uneducated and gullible, to be honest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Ever cooked food before? Ever ground anything into a powder before doing something else to it before eating it? In either case, congratulations, it's processed. This also includes *any* kind of oil or milk alternative, which are very heavily processed extracts from different kinds of plants. *ANY* kind of soy that is actually edible is also heavily processed.

This whole article is bullshit. I first tried dieting by avoiding processed foods (namely, the kinds that tend to be higher in sodium, carbs, fats, etc) and it didn't work for shit. Know what did work? Just watching the caloric intake. Already lost 60 pounds over the last year, and it mainly just involved getting proper perspective on what an actual serving is. I still eat fast food, indeed all kinds of junk foods. I've also lowered my cholesterol and triglycerides in the process, while eating burgers, fries, and pizza no less. The trick is eating portion sizes that an actual human would eat instead of what a rhinoceros would eat.

A plain old hamburger at mcdonalds has about 360 calories. Contrary to popular belief, these hamburgers have been around since way before the obesity epidemic. Know what hasn't? Big triple stacked burgers globbed with mayo and ranch dressing. Another thing that hasn't is eating cereal in the large quantities most people do, which is actually primarily a result of the vegetarian movement (before that happened around the 60's, most people used to eat what we today call a "heavy" breakfast, e.g. eggs, bacon, which IS mostly protein and possibly small amounts of grits or toast.

Cereal (any variety) is mostly carbohydrates on the other hand and you also tend to crave higher amounts of calories worth of vegetarian breakfasts than you do traditional breakfasts; note how cereal bowls used to be tiny, and now they're about three times the size of what they started at mere decades ago.) The following is unscientific, but when I watch most people eat breakfast, I typically see most of them eat 750 calories in the cereal alone (that's typically 5 oz of cereal; it's uncommon to find cereals with less than 150 calories per 1 oz serving.) In fact to be honest, I'm pretty sure the whole vegetarian movement is bunk:

http://www.cholesterol-and-hea...

You really don't know any blacks then. A LOT of them are VERY Christian. I'm atheist myself, and I RARELY find a black person who is also atheist. It's really strange too, because you see atheists of pretty much every ethnicity, but almost never blacks.

Of course, that's my experience, yours may differ.

I'm none of the above. My thoughts about France are probably the same as the typical British person's are (if you're looking for a comparison, anyways.)

I'm also fairly certain that the French hate Americans more than I hate the French.