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Comment Re:They pay the bills, so STFU (Score 1) 660

A thousand pairs of eyeballs isn't a huge advertisment target.

This is one of those points about internet advertising that I don't quite understand. Sure the number of eyeballs reached is fewer for most websites than most traditional media outlets but they're tremendously more targeted eyeballs. At least when you're advertising on the web you can know a lot better that you're reaching the right thousand people.

Comment Re:Who Cares? (Score 3, Funny) 119

Upside Down Flint Rubble Bubble Cake

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 cup dark brown sugar

1/4lb (8tbl) butter

4 cups (18oz) unbleached all purpose flour

1/2 cup milk

2tbl Flint

1.5 tsp baking powder

2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350.

Cream butter and sugar. Stir in eggs. Add half of the flour, mix. Add half of the milk, mix. Add the other half of the flour, then the other half of the milk. Fold in the flint and pour into your favorite upside down cake pan. Blow bubbles into the mixture with a straw. Bake for 45 min or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean. Let cool upside down for at least one hour before removing from the mold.

Comment Re:Laws (Score 3, Insightful) 698

Go look at the cost of a T1 and realize it is only 1.5 Mbps, now look at the cost of that 12 Mbps residential cable. Why do you think the T1 is so much more expensive for almost 1/10th the speed? Technology may change, bandwidth may get so cheap it doesn't matter, but right now, guaranteeing 100% throughput at residential service prices simply wont work.

I agree with you fully. But where's my in-between? Residential internet services are quickly becoming a race to the bottom scenario. Sure I could haul off and spend the multiple thousands of dollars it would cost to install a T1 line. But I don't need a T1 because if my internet goes down for an hour or so every few weeks or my IP address changes from time to time my world doesn't end. So my question is, where's my middle ground? Where's the plan for someone who wants to watch TV shows online, play some games and download big files here and there?

Comment :) Hi (Score 1) 814

Like you would suddenly not use the operating system you have been using for the past 20 years by buying a computer that runs something different.

Umm... I did exactly that. About five years ago my PC met its end in the form of a hard drive failure that came after a whole series of smaller problems. I bought a mac and haven't looked back since. The only "PC" I've owned since then has been the windows partition of my new(ish) macBook that I think I've booted into fewer than five times since installing it.

Do I still use PC's? Sure, sometimes at work... and I think the library's card catalog is on a PC. That's it though.

Comment Re:An ignobel first. (Score 1) 123

Are you kidding? I'd love to win one of these awards.

Some of the research is actually pretty solid scientific stuff. It's also highly applicable to my every-day life.

My personal favorite winners:

Physics - Presented to David Schmidt of the University of Massachusetts, for his partial explanation of the shower-curtain effect: a shower curtain tends to billow inwards while a shower is being taken.

Public Health - Presented to Jillian Clarke of the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, and then Howard University, for investigating the scientific validity of the five-second rule about whether it's safe to eat food that's been dropped on the floor.

Comment Re:It's About Interfering with Apple (Score 2, Insightful) 375

That's the reason why Microsoft is trying to place their stores in close proximity to Apple's, for example.

I wonder if that's the type of thing that will be good for the sales of both companies. Sort of like having the "auto mile" where lots of car dealerships are. When you're in the market for a certain type of product you go to the place where lots of competing stores are. It makes comparison shopping easier. Instead of going online or to BestBuy a customer might just go to the place where the Apple and Microsoft stores are because they can evaluate all their choices in one place.

Comment Re:That's the market. (Score 3, Informative) 375

My wife spent an hour an a half waiting for a "genius" to do a 5 minute phone swap (LCD had cracked).

Ok, that's a long wait. The first time I read that I saw "half an hour". I've almost never seen lines that long and don't they let you make an appointment and at least go shopping elswhere if the lines are that long? How about this, I'll tell my genius bar story, I think it's basically the same story only I look at it the other way.

I bought a new MacBook online. When it arrived it didn't work, wouldn't even turn on. I called Apple's tech support and they had me bring it to the nearest Apple store, also they made an appointment for me. I went to the apple store, waited a few minutes for my 'Genius' who took one look at it and told me he had to swap out the RAM, which he did. Then I took my now working computer home.

Would I rather that my computer had worked in the first place? Yes. Have I spent hours on the phone with tech support from every other imaginable company where they did absolutely nothing to help without first having me do things like "unplug it and plug it back in"? Yes.

Y'know what, I have another story. A coworker of mine bought a laptop from Sony. When it showed up it the camera didn't work. Not the most important part in the world but it's nice to have your new thousand-dollar toy work out of the box. So she called Sony. I have no idea how long this took. In the end their solution was for her to ship the computer back to them so they could fix it. Remember how I live near an apple store? I also work near a SonyStyle store. Instead of doing the fix there, or replacing the computer as I suspect Apple would have done, they had her wait several weeks for the item she had just purchased. Could she have pushed them to replace the computer at their store? Probably, but it wasn't their first response.

What I'm not trying to say is that Apple is perfect, but they have a better commitment to helping solve customer problems then lots of other companies I've dealt with.

"I'm not getting a Mac laptop if I have to make an appointment to some pretentious technician for the simplest of problems".

I'm not sure what you expect to buy with such better support then. I'd rather wait 30 minutes to see a pretentious tech who can fix my problem than an hour for a phone support tech who spends three hours trying instruction manual fixes and can't.

Education

Open Textbooks Win Over Publishers In CA 216

Unequivocal writes "Recently California's Governor announced a free digital textbook competition. The results of that competition were announced today. Many traditional publishers submitted textbooks in this digital textbook competition in CA as well as open publishers. An upstart nonprofit organization named CK-12 contributed a number of textbooks (all free and open source material). 'Of the 16 free digital textbooks for high school math and science reviewed, ten meet at least 90 percent of California's standards. Four meet 100 percent of standards.' Three of those recognized as 100% aligned to California standards were from CK-12 and one from H. Jerome Keisler. None of the publisher's submissions were so recognized. CK-12 has a very small staff, so this is a great proof of the power of open textbooks and open educational resources."

Comment Re:A scarlet letter wasn't enough? (Score 1) 587

Sure, there are violent sex offenders who generally stay in prison more often than not, but there those who did something like sleep with their girlfriend of 2 years whose parents pressed charges because she was 17, and 3 months to 18, and that guy who may end up marrying her, is now a "sex offender" for the rest of his life.

Man, that would be an awkward wedding.

Comment Re:Stupid prices (Score 5, Insightful) 827

That's exactly what Amouth was saying. European plans can be less expensive because the population is much denser and therefore easier to serve (fewer towers). Also since each company only needs to serve a single country customers aren't paying for free access all across Europe.

On the other hand I think US carriers are guilty of heavy upselling. If I live in a dense city in a dense area (Boston, New York, DC, etc) and do 99% of my calling from there why can't I pay for a local plan and avoid subsidizing the tower/person costs of residents of Wyoming?

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