But the advertisers are only interested in statistics that involve viewers who view their ads. That's why Neilsen doesn't include TiVo and online viewing in the surveys.

If the online viewership were able to pay as much as traditional advertising does, you'd have a decent argument.

The dirty little secret in TV is that you, the viewer, are not the customer. You're the product being sold. The advertiser is the customer. Neilsen conducts its measurements in order to discern how many people are exposed to the ads. That's why they leave out TiVo and online viewers - because the advertisers don't want to pay for those viewers, since they get no benefit from their viewing.

Go here, and skip in 2:44.

Yes. Look it up in the dictionary. Specifically, where it says "a sum added to an ordinary price or charge."

Actually, it, like every physical object in the world and some that aren't, can, in fact, have a value put on it.

Want to make a mint selling ordinary hardware?

All you need to do is either

A. Get it FDA certified for use in medicine.

Or

B. Get it FAA approved for use in aviation.

You can pretty much guarantee a 100x price premium in the former case or perhaps 10-20x in the latter case.

Of course, requiring government certification for things upon which the general public relies for life safety is not necessarily a bad thing, but the price premium that comes from the certification requirement probably is proportional to the square of the cost of doing whatever is necessary to obtain said certification.

In the really, really, REALLY old days of telephony, there were no numbers. You rang up the operator and asked to be connected to the Smith house, and the operator connected your plug to their socket.

Once that stopped scaling, numbers were used because it made looking them up on a plug board a lot faster. When automatic dialing came, that scaled similarly because you could cascade stepper relays to do the dialing.

But nowadays telephone switches have more in common with Cisco routers than they do the old gear. There's no reason that you have to number stuff anymore. The instant messaging folks - particularly jabber - are closer to what we need than the old tired PSTN numbering scheme.

I know, the MST3K folks are off doing new things, and that's good. All the more reason for a reboot - bring in new talent, a new idea for a series story arc... There are plenty of lousy movies out there to deconstruct. All it takes is a crew of interns to chase down the rights to them...

How is it a reboot when the series itself is an assortment of more or less unrelated short stories? The Outer Limits did have a revival back in the 90s, and it was... well, the same show that it was in the 50s (except for being in color, having better effects, and worse writing).

So, based on your probable purchase history.... would it be hotels that specialize in rooms by the hour.

Whoosh!

I believe his point was that me.com implies Apple fanboi.

Pretty much, yeah.

If you owned a business, you'd probably understand.

The posters on BART all say that in an emergency wheelchairs should be left behind and their occupants carried.

If that's good enough for BART...

But here's the thing: Let's assume the Harley dealership has a staircase up to the front door. While it is indeed possible that someone in a wheelchair might wish to purchase, oh I dunno, a Harley jacket or something from the Harley dealership, would they not be reasonably able to do so if an employee stepped outside to sell it to them?

Given how many handicapped people actually would visit that Harley dealership, versus the cost the dealership would need to pay to add a ramp or what not, it's doubly stupid that the ADA would insist on the ramp being built AND give a fat payday to an ambulance chaser for pointing it out.

As for evacuating the handicapped in an emergency, no building in the country has a wheelchair accessible fire stairwell. The emergency posters on BART all say that wheelchairs should be left behind and their occupants carried. And yet these situations pass muster.

In fact, it was. Its proponents claim that ADA issues are civil rights issues, and that therefore incenting lawyers to file ADA suits empowers helpless plaintiffs that would otherwise have no recourse.

In actual practice, the ADA further marginalizes the handicapped, because they effectively become walking (or rolling) lawsuit machines.