Land lines can accept Collect Calls. Where the person calling you might be stuck in a situation where they are far away, and can't afford to pay for a call (such as a pay phone, stuck in a prison, in jail for some reason). They can ask the operator to reverse the charges, so that you, the one receiving the call, can talk to that person.

VOIP phones don't have the billing infrastructure and laws/regulations that require they have this ability. As a result, loss of land lines means less and less ability for a family member to be able to reach you in an unexpectedly harsh emergency.

The only reason I still have a land line is because this happened to me. A family member ended up in jail, and the only way that they were able to call and let me know was because I had a land line. If I hadn't had one, I suppose I would have found out... eventually? Somehow? It's hard to say.

I really feel like we're losing something, and not many people are giving serious thought to this particular service, because it's so rarely used, and hard to predict what conditions would have to happen for it to be useful.

DVD's are fragile things. When exposed to the hostile environment of the Postal system, and to Renters, they get damaged pretty quickly.

As a result, physical DVD's must be repurchased by Netflix over and over, if they are a popular rental item. This represents a measurable revenue stream for the film industry, and they are probably quite happy with it.

Streaming movies don't incur this damage and don't generate the same revenue stream for DVD sales.

I'd be curious to see some statistics from Netflix, telling how many times they are able to rent out a disc before it comes back unplayable. I know I've had a fair few unplayable discs shipped to me by Netflix.

+1 This is just so that they can figure out how people go about hacking their phones, so that they can design phones that are more hack-resistant.

You win the "Whoosh" award.

BT means BlueTooth, of course.

Thanks, Ants.... Thants.

I think you words out.

"Flammable" means "it can burn." Like a piece of wood. If you hold a match to it for a while, it will eventually start burning.

"Inflammable" means "capable of bursting into flame." Like a pool of gasoline: If a flame touches it, it will be a raging fire, instantly.

So these two words are not exactly interchangeable; there is a difference in meaning.

Actually, Zork runs on anything.

The disk drives weren't faster, it was the I/O interface to the computer that was faster. PET's used the IEEE-488 parallel bus, while the C64 used the IEEE-488-"C" serial bus. Obviously a parallel bus can move more bits at a time than a serial bus at the same operating frequency. When compared to the tape drives, the disk drive was blazing fast. :)

It's a dessert topping and a floor wax!

Did you try listening to music on the iPod?